ONE MORE ATTEMPT.
"That man again!" Lady Woodroffe threw the card into the fire. "Tell
him I will not see him. No. Let him come up."
It was Richard Woodroffe, proposing to make his last attempt. Before
doing so, he had run down to Birmingham and seen the newly-found
witness. He was a most trustworthy person; he picked out the
photograph of Lady Woodroffe from a bundle of photographs; he
remembered the case and the lady perfectly well. There was, therefore,
no doubt possible that she had been in Birmingham at that time, and
that she had lost her own son.
"Sir"--she sat up in her chair with angry eyes--"this is persecution!
I have already given a patient hearing to your most impudent story."
"You have, Lady Woodroffe." Neither her angry looks nor her presence
disconcerted him now. He was so perfectly certain of his cause, and of
her shameless falsehood, that he stood before her at ease, and even
with some appearance of dignity.
"I even took the trouble to invite your friend, the person for whom
you profess to act, the woman with the delusion----"
"You did." He did not wait to be invited. He took a chair and sat down
in it.
"In order to convince her of her absurdity."
"In which you failed. Because, after all your talk, there remained the
solid fact--the death of Sir Humphrey's son."
"Sir Humphrey had one son only, who is still living. I was wrong in
thinking that a plain statement of facts could move the poor mad
woman. She brought with her a young person, who encouraged her to
insult me. They even attempted to assault me, I believe. After the
grossest abuse, they carried off a bundle of baby-linen, and things
that I had treasured, for reasons which I fear you are incapable of
understanding."
"No, Lady Woodroffe, on the contrary, I understand them very well. You
brought them out on this occasion with the intention of showing this
poor lady what I must venture to call your defiance."
"My defiance? Certainly; I accept the word. My defiance. You appear to
be almost as polite as your friends, Mr. Woodroffe."
"You could not have chosen a more effective manner of announcing your
intentions. 'There!' you said, 'these clothes which you made with your
own fingers show that it is your boy; yet you shall not have him, and
I defy you to prove that he is yours.'"
"You are correct on one point. I do defy you to prove that fact."
"Very well; I am here to-day to tell you that I have advanced one more
step, and a very important step it is."
"Important or not, I defy you to prove the fact. This is not, however,
exactly an acknowledgment. But I shall not argue with you; I believe
I ought to hand you over at once to my lawyers, to be dealt with for
conspiracy."
Richard Woodroffe smiled. "I wish you would," he said. "I should like
nothing better than the publicity of an action."
"Oh," she groaned, "the pertinacity of the black-mailer!"
"I shall not be insulted, whatever you say. I am here to tell you that
the proofs have now closed round you so completely, that there is not
left, I verily believe, a single loophole of escape."
Lady Woodroffe rose with dignity. "You talk to me, sir--to _me_?--of
escape and loophole. Go, sir--go to my solicitors."
"Certainly." Richard continued, however, to occupy his chair. "I will
go to your solicitors whenever you please. I would rather go to them
than come here. But for the sake of others, I would prefer that you
should acknowledge the fact, and let the son go back to his mother. He
is my own half-brother, but it is not fraternal affection that prompts
me in this research, I assure you. If you refuse to hear me, I shall
have to go to your solicitors through Mrs. Haveril's solicitors."
"Oh, go on, then!"
She sat down again, and crossed her hands in her lap, assuming
something of the expression of a person bored to death by a very bad
sermon.
"I have certain evidence in my hands, then"--he could not avoid a
smile of satisfaction--"which connects you with the dead child--your
child."
Lady Woodroffe caught her breath and started, as if in sudden pain.
"Go on, sir."
"I will tell you what it is. You arrived one evening at the Great
Midland Hotel, Birmingham, with an Indian ayah and a child. You
engaged three rooms--a sitting-room and two bedrooms; you explained
that the child had been taken suddenly and alarmingly ill in the
train; you sent out for a medical man; he came; he kept the maids
running about with hot water, and the boys going out for remedies
and prescriptions; he stayed with you all night, watching the case;
in the morning your child was dead; three days afterwards you buried
him. There is no monument over the child's grave, because you made
an arrangement with the help of Dr. Robert Steele, and substituted
another child for him, and you went away two or three days after the
funeral, and disappeared. The rooms were taken in your name; the books
of the hotel prove so much."
"Oh! This man is tedious--tedious--with his repetitions."
"I have been down to Birmingham again. I have now found an old waiter
who remembers the circumstance perfectly well--Indian ayah and sick
baby and funeral. He says he remembers you, but that I doubt. I have
also found the medical man who was called in. He not only remembers
the case, which he entered at the time in his note-book, but he also
remembers you----"
"After four and twenty years----!"
"--and picked you out of a bundle of photographs. I think you will
admit that this is an important step?"
She made no reply. Her face was drawn and twisted with the pain of
listening.
"What is wanted now," Richard added, "is the connection of yourself
and the child. If we fail there----"
"You will fail."
"We shall ask Sir Robert."
"You will fail."
"Then we shall give publicity to the case--I don't quite know how. All
the world shall understand. You will have to explain----"
"All the world? It is the High Court of Justice that you must address.
I shall look to the judge to protect me. Remember it is in my power to
prove that I was in Scotland at that very time."
"On that very day when the child died?"
"On that very day," she replied, firmly and without hesitation.
"Lady Woodroffe, I cannot believe what you say."
"You can prove what you like," she repeated, "but you cannot prove
that I bought the child."
"To speak plainly, I don't believe one word about your proving an
_alibi_, Lady Woodroffe, any more than I believe that remarkably bold
falsehood about the child's clothes. We shall prove the death of the
child beyond a doubt. You can then, if you please, find out something
that will amuse the world about Humphrey. As for the publicity----"
"Since you will only prove that a woman took my name, I care nothing.
My reputation is not likely to be injured by such a story. Who will
believe against my word--that I--Lady Woodroffe--a leader, sir, in
a world of which you and your like know nothing--the world which
advances humanity--the world of religion and of charity--the world
which combats vice unceasingly--should condescend to a crime so
ignoble and so purposeless?"
"I am not concerned with your credibilities, Lady Woodroffe. I learn
that you made a large use of them with Mrs. Haveril, and only desisted
when they proved a failure. Then you took to defiance."
"The publicity will fall upon the fashionable physician, the great man
of science, the head of his profession, who will have to acknowledge
that he found a child and bought it for a certain unknown person--a
noble way for a young physician to earn a fee! The publicity will also
fall upon the now notorious lady who has got up in the world since she
sold her only child for fifty pounds, to keep it and herself out of
the workhouse. No injurious publicity will fall upon me, other than
the discovery of some woman who once took my name."
"You are identified by your photograph. You forget that."
"Can I? After four and twenty years? Can any woman of my
age--forty-nine--be identified, by a stranger, with another woman of
twenty-five or thereabouts? Now, Mr. Richard Woodroffe, what else have
you got to say?"
"I have only this to say. I came here to-day, Lady Woodroffe, in
the hope that what I have told you would show you the danger of your
position. For the sake of this lady, who is worn almost to death by
the anxiety of her situation, I hoped that you would confess."
"Confess! I to confess! You speak as if I were a common criminal."
"No," said Richard, "not common by any means."
Lady Woodroffe left her chair and stepped over to the fireplace.
She looked older, and the authority went out of her very strangely.
She laid her hand on the shelf, as if for support, and she spoke
slowly--with no show of anger--slowly, and with sadness.
"I think, sir, I do think, that if you could consider the meaning of
this charge to a person in my position, the suffering you inflict upon
me, the mischief you may do to me, and I know not how many more, by
persisting in this charge, you would abandon it."
"I cannot; I am acting for another."
"You are playing a game to win. I don't accuse you of sordid motives.
You want to win."
"Perhaps I do."
"Have you asked yourself the simple question, whether it is possible
for me to commit such a crime, and then to confess?"
"I have to win this game, Lady Woodroffe. I think I have won it."
"It is not won yet. And believe me, sir, it will not be won unless I
choose."
"We can place you in a very awkward position, anyhow."
"Mr. Richard Woodroffe, you came here to make a final appeal to
me; it is my turn to make a final appeal to you. I am a woman, as
perhaps you know, of very considerable importance in the world. Such
a charge as you bring against me would not only crush me, if it were
proved, but it would dislocate or ruin a great many associations
and institutions of which I am the very soul. Thousands of orphans,
working girls, Magdalens, and sinners, would lose their best friend.
I am their best friend; my tongue and my pen keep up the stream which
flows in to their relief. Is it not possible for that woman to think
of these things? Or, there is the boy. He is partly, I suppose, what
he is by education, partly by his nature; take away from him his
position as a gentleman of rank and family, send him out disgraced to
make his own way in the world, and he will sink like lead. You call
him your half-brother. Well, Mr. Woodroffe, he is not a young man of
many virtues; in fact, he has many vices."
"That I can well believe."
"If he has seven devils now, after this disclosure he will have
seventy-seven devils."
"That also I can well believe. But, of course, I do not think about
him."
"Then, Mr. Woodroffe, can you not persuade that poor woman to go home,
to be content with what she has seen and you have proved?"
"No, I cannot."
"Can you not remind her that she sold the child on the condition that
she would never trouble about him, or seek to know where he might be
living?"
"No, I cannot. She has seen her son; she knows who he is; she wants
your acknowledgment. Give her that, and, I don't know, in fact, what
will happen afterwards."
Lady Woodroffe sat down and sighed heavily. "Be it so," she said. "You
will go on; you will do your worst."
Richard Woodroffe regarded her with a sense of pity, and even of
respect. The woman had supported her position by a succession of
shameless lies; she was now virtually confessing to him that they were
lies. But she had so much to lose--her great position among religious
and charitable people, her reputation, the respect which her blameless
life and her great abilities had won for her. All these things were
threatened.
"Madam," he said, his face full of emotion, "if it were only your son
to be thought of, I would retire. But there is this poor lady, who is
only kept alive, I believe, by the hope and belief that her son will
be restored to her. Believe me, if I may speak of pity for you----"
"Pity?" She sprang to her feet with fire and fury in her cheeks and
eyes. It is, happily, the rarest thing in the world to see a woman--I
mean a woman of culture--overmastered by passion. Yet it lies there;
it is always possible. In the heart of the meekest maiden, the most
self-governed and most highly bred woman, there lies hidden the
tigress, the fish-wife, the scold, the shrew. Formerly, whenever women
were gathered together, they quarrelled; whenever they quarrelled,
they fought--sometimes with fists, cudgels, brooms, chairs, sometimes
with tongues. Men were so horribly frightened by the scolding wife,
that they ducked her, put her in a cage, carried her round in a cart.
The little word "pity" was the last drop in the cup. Lady Woodroffe
raged and stormed at the unfortunate Richard. For the time her mind
was beyond control; afterwards, he remembered that such a fit of
passion showed the tension of her mind. He made no reply. When her
torrent of words and threats was exhausted, she threw herself into her
chair, and buried her face in her hands.
Then Richard quietly withdrew.