My suspicion, from that time, I felt was a truth. I knew that there were
characters so complex that no human being could understand them. Here
was a beautiful surface--Heaven only knew what lay underneath. There was
no outward brand of murder on the white brow, or red stain on the soft,
white hand. But day by day the certainty grew in my mind. Another thing
struck me very much. We were sitting one day quite alone on the grass
near a pretty little pool of water, called "Dutton Pool." In some parts
it was very shallow, in some very deep. Lance had gone somewhere on
business, and had left us to entertain each other. I had often noticed
that one of Mrs. Fleming's favorite ornaments was a golden locket with
one fine diamond in the center; she wore it suspended by a small chain
from her neck. As she sat talking to me she was playing with the chain,
when it suddenly became unfastened and the locket fell from it. In less
than a second it was hidden in the long grass. She looked for it in
silence for some minutes, then she said, gently:
"I have dropped my locket, Mr. Ford; is it near you? I cannot find it."
"Is it one you prize very much?" I asked.
"I should not like to lose it," she replied, and her face paled as
searching in the long grass she saw nothing of it.
I found it in a few minutes, but it was lying open; the fall had
loosened the spring. I could not help seeing the contents as I gave it
to her--a round ring of pale golden hair.
"A baby's curl?" I said, as I returned it to her.
Her whole face went blood-red in one minute.
"The only thing I have belonging to my little sister," she said. "She
died when I was a child."
"You must prize it," I said; but I could not keep the dryness of
suspicion from my voice.
"Mrs. Fleming," I asked, suddenly, "are you like Lance and myself,
without relations?"
"Almost," she replied, briefly.
"Strange that three people should be almost alone in the world but for
each other!" I said.
"I was left an orphan when I was four years old," she said. "Only Heaven
knows how I have cried out upon my parents for leaving me. I never had
one happy hour. Can you imagine a whole childhood passed without one
happy hour?"
"Hardly," I said.
With white, nervous fingers she fastened the gold chain round her neck
again.
"Not one happy hour," she said. "I was left under the care of my
grandmother, a proud, cold, cruel woman, who never said a kind word to
me, and who grudged me every slice of bread and butter I ate."
She looked at me, still holding the golden locket in her white fingers.
"If I had been like other girls," she said "if I had parents to love me,
brothers and sisters, friends or relatives, I should have been
different. Believe me, Mr. Ford, there are white slaves in England whose
slavery is worse than that of an African child. I was one of them. I
think of my youth with a sick shudder; I think of my childhood with
horror, and I almost thank Heaven that the tyrant is dead who blighted
my life."
Now the real woman was breaking through the mask; her face flushed; her
eyes shone.
"I often talk to Lance about it," she said, "this terrible childhood of
mine. I was punished for the least offence. I never heard a word of pity
or affection. I never saw a look of anything but hate on my
grandmother's face. No one was ever pitiful to me; fierce words, fierce
blows, complaints of the burden I was; that was all my mother's mother
ever gave to me. I need not say that I hated her, and learned to loathe
the life I fain would have laid down. Do I tire you, Mr. Ford?"
"On the contrary, I am deeply interested," I replied.
She went on:
"My grandmother was not poor; she was greedy. She had a good income
which died with her, and she strongly objected to spend it on me. She
paid for my education on the condition that when I could get my own
living by teaching I should repay her. Thank Heaven, I did so!"
"Then you were a governess?" I said.
"Yes; I began to get my own living at fifteen. I was tall for my age,
and quite capable," she said; "but fifteen is very young, Mr. Ford, for
a girl to be thrown on to the world."
"You must have been a very beautiful girl," I said.
"Yes, so much the worse for me." She seemed to repent of the words as
soon as they were uttered.
"I mean," she added, quickly, "that my grandmother hated me the more for
it."
There was silence between us for some minutes, then she added:
"You may imagine, after such an unloved life, how I love Lance."
"He is the best fellow in the world," I said, "and the woman who could
deceive him ought to be shot."
"What woman would deceive him?" she asked. "Indeed, for matter of that,
what woman could? I am his wife!"
"It happens very often," I said, trying to speak carelessly, "that good
and loyal men like Lance are the most easily deceived."
"It should not be so," she said. She was startled again, I saw it in her
face.
That same afternoon we drove into Vale Royal. Mrs. Fleming had several
poor people whom she wished to see, and some shopping to do.
"You should take your locket to a jeweler's," I said, "and have the
spring secured."
"What locket is that?" asked Lance, looking up eagerly from his paper.
"Mine," she replied--"this." She held it out for his inspection. "I
nearly lost it this morning," she said; "it fell from my neck."
"Is it the one that holds your sister's hair?" he asked.
"Yes," she replied, opening it and holding it out for him to see.
What nerve she had, if this was what I imagined, the hair of the little
dead child. Loving Lance rose from his chair and kissed her.
"You would not like to lose that, my darling, would you?" he said,
"Excepting me, that is all you have in the world."
They seemed to forget all about me; she clung to him, and he kissed her
face until I thought he would never give over.
"How lovely you were when I found you, Frances," he said. "Do you
remember the evening--you were bending over the crysanthemums?"
"I shall forget my own life and my own soul before I forget that," she
replied.
And I said to myself: "Even if my suspicion be perfectly true, have I
any right to mar such love as that?" I noticed that during all the
conversation about the locket, she never once looked at me.
We went to Vale Royal, and there never was man so bewildered as I. Lance
proposed that we should go visiting with Mrs. Fleming.
"Get your purse ready, John," he said--"this visit will require a small
fortune."
"I find the poor value kind words as much as money," said the beautiful
woman.
"Then they must be very disinterested," he said, laughingly--"I should
prefer money."
"You are only jesting," she said.
It was a pretty sight to see her go into those poor, little, dirty
houses. There was no pride, no patronage, no condescension--she was
simply sweetly natural; she listened to their complaints, gave them
comfort and relieved their wants. As I watched her I could not help
thinking to myself that if I were a fashionable or titled lady, this
would be my favorite relaxation--visiting and relieving the poor. I
never saw so much happiness purchased by a few pounds. We came to a
little cottage that stood by itself in a garden.
"Are you growing tired?" she asked of her husband.
"I never tire with you," he replied.
"And you, Mr. Ford?" she said.
She never overlooked or forgot me, but studied my comfort on every
occasion. I could have told her that I was watching what was to me a
perfect problem--the kindly, gentle, pitying deeds of a woman, who had,
I believed, murdered her own child.
"I am not tired, Mrs. Fleming, I am interested," I said.
The little cottage which stood in the midst of a wild patch of garden
was inhabited by a day-laborer. He was away at work; his wife sat at
home nursing a little babe, a small, fair, tiny child, evidently not
more than three weeks old, dying, too, if one could judge from the face.
She bent over it--the beautiful, graceful woman who was Lance's wife.
Ah, Heaven! the change that came over her, the passion of mother love
that came into her face; she was transformed.
"Let me hold the little one for you," she said, "while you rest for a
few minutes;" and the poor, young mother gratefully accepted the offer.
What a picture she made in the gloomy room of the little cottage, her
beautiful face and shining hair, her dress sweeping the ground, and the
tiny child lying in her arms.
"Does it suffer much?" she asked, in her sweet, compassionate voice.
"It did, ma'am," replied the mother, "but I have given it something to
keep it quiet."
"Do you mean to say that you have drugged it?" asked Mrs. Fleming.
"Only a little cordial, ma'am, nothing more; it keeps it sleeping; and
when it sleeps it does not suffer."
She shook her beautiful head.
"It is a bad practice," she said; "more babes are killed by drugs than
die a natural death."
I was determined she should look at me; I stepped forward and touched
the child's face.
"Do you not think it is merciful at times to give a child like this
drugs when it has to die; to lessen the pain of death--to keep it from
crying out?"
Ah, me, that startled fear that leaped into her eyes, the sudden quiver
on the beautiful face.
"I do not know," she said; "I do not understand such things."
"What can it matter," I said, "whether a little child like this dies
conscious or not? It cannot pray--it must go straight to Heaven! Do you
not think anyone who loved it, and had to see it die, would think it
greatest kindness to drug it?"
My eyes held hers; I would not lose their glance; she could not take
them away. I saw the fear leap into them, then die away; she was saying
to herself, what could I know?
But I knew. I remembered what the doctor said in Brighton when the
inquest was held on the tiny white body, "that it had been mercifully
drugged before it was drowned."
"I cannot tell," she replied, with a gentle shake of the head. "I only
know that unfortunately the poor people use these kind of cordials too
readily. I should not like to decide whether in a case like this it is
true kindness or not."
"What a pretty child, Mr. Ford; what a pity that it must die!"
Could it be that she who bent with such loving care over this little
stranger, who touched its tiny face with her delicate lips, who held it
cradled in her soft arms, was the same desperate woman who had thrown
her child into the sea?