THE KISS
In coming to Gissing, Thomas Alvin had not had the remotest idea that
the Barrimores lived at Hastings. It had been in London that his
brother and Eweretta had met Philip, and it had been to the Savage Club
that the communication of Eweretta’s supposed death and burial had been
sent. Thomas Alvin had heard his brother say that Philip was a member
of that club.
Gissing had been fixed upon as a residence because of its loneliness,
and because it was within reach of Hastings, and Thomas Alvin had years
ago visited that watering-place (when in partnership with a man who
afterwards threw him over) and taken a great liking to it.
His plot to possess himself of his niece’s fortune had succeeded
admirably up to now.
Kept under the influence of drugs, Eweretta had been very little
trouble.
But lately she had refused her food, and had had terrifying sane
moments in which she had outbursts of denunciation.
Thomas Alvin regretted the occasions when he had exercised physical
cruelty; strange to say, from pity for the defrauded and outraged girl,
but also because he was superstitious. To his curiously constructed
conscience, it had seemed only a clever business transaction to get
hold of Eweretta’s fortune. Moreover, did he not permit her to share
it? But to treat the girl with cruelty was monstrous, and might bring
disaster on him. He had never treated her badly when sober. Ill-luck
had followed him all his life, as being the thirteenth child of his
father, and he was ever watching for some new calamity to befall him.
On each occasion on which he had inflicted cruelty on his niece he had
been seized with terror, and had flown to the brandy bottle again. He
was not a drunkard, but at these times he got drunk.
Drink is not a Canadian vice, and Thomas Alvin had passed most of his
life in Canada.
The thing he feared most, after a glass or two of the fiery fluid, was
the spirit of his brother John, Eweretta’s father--the one member of
the large family who had succeeded in making a fortune.
Thomas devoutly believed in ghosts. He never forgot a scene at
Klondyke, where a murdered man had shown himself in the light of the
camp fire. There had been men there who, though terrified enough at the
time, had declared that the ghost was the man himself--alive, though he
had been left for dead. But Thomas had always been convinced it was a
spirit they had seen.
When Mrs. Le Breton returned from Hastings, she found Thomas just awake
from his drunken sleep, and shivering in the dark dining-room, where
supper had been laid while he slept.
She put down a parcel and lit the lamp.
Then she saw him and understood.
“I am glad you have come,” he whimpered. “I saw John. I am sure I saw
John--”
“Drink,” interrupted Mrs. Le Breton. “If you are going to take to
_that_, we are lost.”
“I don’t mean to,” the man answered penitently. (He was in that
foolish state which exists when a man is recovering, but not yet
recovered, from an alcoholic excess.)
“And don’t ill-use the poor girl again either,” went on Mrs. Le Breton
virtuously.
Mrs. Le Breton’s cruelty was of a more refined description, and covered
up by kind words and attempted caresses--attempted only, because always
repulsed.
“I swear I won’t strike her again,” whimpered Alvin. “I hate myself for
it.”
“And don’t swear, lest you add the breaking of your oath to your other
sins. What we’ve got to do is to stick to our story, stick to the girl,
and stick to the money. We must have no scandals. That would be to
court inquiries. Do you know that Pickett’s man who gave me a lift in
the trap to Hastings asked me if we kept a wild animal in the enclosed
wood. He said his master had heard strange, unearthly sounds from our
place. You know what that was. There must be no more of it.”
This piece of information went far towards thoroughly sobering Thomas
Alvin.
“What a fool I am!” he muttered. “What a fool I have always been! I was
born cursed! I shall die a violent death.”
Mrs. Le Breton jeered.
“Then it won’t be by your own hand,” she told him. “You are too much of
a coward.”
He looked at her with fierce eyes in which hate shone.
“It was for calling me _that_ that I _struck_ the girl,” he said.
“But you daren’t strike _me_,” she reminded him. “You only dare attack
what can’t defend itself.”
From which conversation the reader will gather that there was not much
affection between the plotters.
Mrs. Le Breton, however, was not a creature to be cowed by a bully.
Misery had taught her courage, while it had made her cruel. She had not
always been what she was now.
She had been a gentle, loving woman once, before John Alvin had come
across her path.
A pretty young widow, earning her living by hard work, her heart had
responded only too readily to the charm of John Alvin. She had fallen a
victim to him and was ruined before she discovered that he had a wife.
John Alvin’s legitimate and illegitimate daughters had been born near
about the same time.
John Alvin had forsaken the woman he had wronged, and left her to her
fate.
Aimée had been born a beautiful child, but weak-minded.
For eighteen years Mrs. Le Breton had supported herself and her
afflicted child by mending shoes! She had found that so she could best
make a living, and at the same time remain at home. Home? It had merely
been a two-roomed “shack.”
For eighteen years she had nursed her hatred against John Alvin--John
Alvin, who had grown rich, and had a house in Montreal, and could send
his daughter Eweretta to a fine school, and could take her to visit
London.
Mrs. Le Breton kept herself informed of the movements of John Alvin.
She rejoiced when his wife died. She also nursed for a brief space the
hope that then he would remember the mother of his other child and do
her justice.
With infinite difficulty she journeyed with her daughter to Montreal
to be spurned by John Alvin, and sent back to her boot-mending.
It was then she had seen Eweretta and been struck by the appalling
likeness she bore to Aimée.
It was at the death of John Alvin that Mrs. Le Breton’s hopes once more
rose.
Surely he would leave something out of his riches for his afflicted
daughter!
She sought Thomas Alvin, who was at that time at Regina. He, too,
had had hopes of getting something under his brother’s will, and was
furious because all was left to Eweretta.
But at her death it was all to come to him.
Aimée was at that time dying, and Thomas Alvin conceived the idea of
inducing Eweretta (an easy matter with the tender-hearted girl) to come
and visit her half-sister, and befriend her, and then substitute one
sister for the other, and claim the money.
It had been so easy!
The dead girl was dressed in Eweretta’s fine clothes, while Eweretta
herself was heavily drugged, and dressed in her half-sister’s poor
garments. No one doubted that it was indeed Eweretta who was buried at
Qu’Appelle.
So Philip Barrimore heard of the death of John Alvin and of Eweretta
at the same time. As we know, he journeyed to Canada and saw the grave
where his beloved one was supposed to lie.
But no one could tell him what had become of Aimée and her mother.
And now, within a year, Philip had by the merest chance come to be a
near neighbor of those he sought! But little did he dream that the girl
who passed for Mrs. Le Breton’s daughter was his own lost Eweretta.
After supper Mrs. Le Breton left Thomas Alvin to himself and went to
look at Eweretta. She discovered that the girl was asleep upon her bed,
fully dressed. She imagined that Thomas Alvin had left the door of the
room unlocked.
Eweretta was apparently dreaming a pleasant dream, for a smile played
about her lips.
So pale was she, that she looked like a waxen figure more than a living
girl.
Mrs. Le Breton stooped the candle over her, and looked earnestly at
her. Then her mouth quivered; tears chased each other down her cheeks.
She was so like Aimée!
The old dead womanliness woke in her at that moment, and with an
irresistible impulse she leaned over and softly kissed the pale face.