It was already autumn, and in the city of New York an early Sunday
morning breeze was sweeping up the leaves that had fallen from the
regularly planted ailantus trees before the brown-stone frontage of a
row of monotonously alike five-storied houses on one of the principal
avenues. The Pastor of the Third Presbyterian Church, that uplifted
its double towers on the corner, stopped before one of these dwellings,
ran up the dozen broad steps, and rang the bell. He was presently
admittted to the sombre richness of a hall and drawing-room with
high-backed furniture of dark carved woods, like cathedral stalls, and,
hat in hand, somewhat impatiently awaited the arrival of his hostess
and parishioner. The door opened to a tall, white-haired woman in
lustreless black silk. She was regular and resolute in features, of
fine but unbending presence, and, though somewhat past middle age,
showed no signs of either the weakness or mellowness of years.
"I am sorry to disturb your Sabbath morning meditations, Sister
Argalls, nor would I if it were not in the line of Christian duty; but
Sister Robbins is unable today to make her usual Sabbath hospital
visit, and I thought if you were excused from the Foreign Missionary
class and Bible instruction at three you might undertake her functions.
I know, my dear old friend," he continued, with bland deprecation of
her hard-set eyes, "how distasteful this promiscuous mingling with the
rough and ungodly has always been to you, and how reluctant you are to
be placed in the position of being liable to hear coarse, vulgar, or
irreverent speech. I think, too, in our long and pleasant pastoral
relations, you have always found me mindful of it. I admit I have
sometimes regretted that your late husband had not more generally
familiarized you with the ways of the world. But so it is--we all have
our weaknesses. If not one thing, another. And as Envy and
Uncharitableness sometimes find their way in even Christian hearts, I
should like you to undertake this office for the sake of example.
There are some, dear Sister Argalls, who think that the rich widow who
is most liberal in the endowment of the goods that Providence has
intrusted to her hands claims therefore to be exempt from labor in the
Christian vineyard. Let us teach them how unjust they are."
"I am willing," said the lady, with a dry, determined air. "I suppose
these patients are not professedly bad characters?"
"By no means. A few, perhaps; but the majority are
unfortunates--dependent either upon public charity or some small
provision made by their friends."
"Very well."
"And you understand that though they have the privilege of rejecting
your Christian ministrations, dear Sister Argalls, you are free to
judge when you may be patient or importunate with them?"
"I understand."
The Pastor was not an unkindly man, and, as he glanced at the
uncompromising look in Mrs. Argalls's eyes, felt for a moment some
inconsistency between his humane instincts and his Christian duty.
"Some of them may require, and be benefited by, a stern monitress, and
Sister Robbins, I fear, was weak," he said consolingly to himself, as
he descended the steps again.
At three o'clock Mrs. Argalls, with a reticule and a few tracts, was at
the door of St. John's Hospital. As she displayed her testimonials and
announced that she had taken Mrs. Robbins's place, the officials
received her respectfully, and gave some instructions to the
attendants, which, however, did not stop some individual comments.
"I say, Jim, it doesn't seem the square thing to let that grim old girl
loose among them poor convalescents."
"Well, I don't know: they say she's rich and gives a lot o' money away,
but if she tackles that swearing old Kentuckian in No. 3, she'll have
her hands full."
However, the criticism was scarcely fair, for Mrs. Argalls, although
moving rigidly along from bed to bed of the ward, equipped with a
certain formula of phrases, nevertheless dropped from time to time some
practical common-sense questions that showed an almost masculine
intuition of the patients' needs and requirements. Nor did she betray
any of that over-sensitive shrinking from coarseness which the good
Pastor had feared, albeit she was quick to correct its exhibition. The
languid men listened to her with half-aggressive, half-amused interest,
and some of the satisfaction of taking a bitter but wholesome tonic.
It was not until she reached the bed at the farther end of the ward
that she seemed to meet with any check.
It was occupied by a haggard man, with a long white moustache and
features that seemed wasted by inward struggle and fever. At the first
sound of her voice he turned quickly towards her, lifted himself on his
elbow, and gazed fixedly in her face.
"Kate Howard--by the Eternal!" he said, in a low voice.
Despite her rigid self-possession the woman started, glanced hurriedly
around, and drew nearer to him.
"Pendleton!" she said, in an equally suppressed voice, "What, in God's
name, are you doing here?"
"Dying, I reckon--sooner or later," he said grimly, "that's what they
do here."
"But--what," she went on hurriedly, still glancing over her shoulder as
if she suspected some trick--"what has brought you to this?"
"YOU!" said the colonel, dropping back exhaustedly on his pillow. "You
and your daughter."
"I don't understand you," she said quickly, yet regarding him with
stern rigidity. "You know perfectly well I have NO daughter. You know
perfectly well that I've kept the word I gave you ten years ago, and
that I have been dead to her as she has been to me."
"I know," said the colonel, "that within the last three months I have
paid away my last cent to keep the mouth of an infernal scoundrel shut
who KNOWS that you are her mother, and threatens to expose her to her
friends. I know that I'm dying here of an old wound that I got when I
shut the mouth of another hound who was ready to bark at her two years
after you disappeared. I know that between you and her I've let my old
nigger die of a broken heart, because I couldn't keep him to suffer
with me, and I know that I'm here a pauper on the State. I know that,
Kate, and when I say it I don't regret it. I've kept my word to YOU,
and, by the Eternal, your daughter's worth it! For if there ever was a
fair and peerless creature--it's your child!"
"And she--a rich woman--unless she squandered the fortune I gave
her--lets you lie here!" said the woman grimly.
"She don't know it."
"She SHOULD know it! Have you quarreled?" She was looking at him
keenly.
"She distrusts me, because she half suspects the secret, and I hadn't
the heart to tell her all."
"All? What does she know? What does this man know? What has been
told her?" she said rapidly.
"She only knows that the name she has taken she has no right to."
"Right to? Why, it was written on the Trust--Yerba Buena."
"No, not that. She thought it was a mistake. She took the name of
Arguello."
"What?" said Mrs. Argalls, suddenly grasping the invalid's wrist with
both hands. "What name?" her eyes were startled from their rigid
coldness, her lips were colorless.
"Arguello! It was some foolish schoolgirl fancy which that hound
helped to foster in her. Why--what's the matter, Kate?"
The woman dropped the helpless man's wrist, then, with an effort,
recovered herself sufficiently to rise, and, with an air of increased
decorum, as if the spiritual character of their interview excluded
worldly intrusion, adjusted the screen around his bed, so as partly to
hide her own face and Pendleton's. Then, dropping into the chair
beside him, she said, in her old voice, from which the burden of ten
long years seemed to have been lifted,--
"Harry, what's that you're playing on me?"
"I don't understand you," said Pendleton amazedly.
"Do you mean to say you don't know it, and didn't tell her yourself?"
she said curtly.
"What? Tell her what?" he repeated impatiently.
"That Arguello WAS her father!"
"Her father?" He tried to struggle to his elbow again, but she laid
her hand masterfully upon his shoulder and forced him back. "Her
father!" he repeated hurriedly. "Jose Arguello! Great God!--are you
sure?"
Quietly and yet mechanically gathering the scattered tracts from the
coverlet, and putting them back, one by one in her reticule, she closed
it and her lips with a snap as she uttered--"Yes."
Pendleton remained staring at her silently, "Yes," he muttered, "it may
have been some instinct of the child's, or some diabolical fancy of
Briones'. But," he said bitterly, "true or not, she has no right to
his name."
"And I say she HAS."
She had risen to her feet, with her arms folded across her breast, in
an attitude of such Puritan composure that the distant spectators might
have thought she was delivering an exordium to the prostrate man.
"I met Jose Arguello, for the second time, in New Orleans," she said
slowly, "eight years ago. He was still rich, but ruined in health by
dissipation. I was tired of my way of life. He proposed that I should
marry him to take care of him and legitimatize our child. I was forced
to tell him what I had done with her, and that the Trust could not be
disturbed until she was of age and her own mistress. He assented. We
married, but he died within a year. He died, leaving with me his
acknowledgment of her as his child, and the right to claim her if I
chose."
"And?"--interrupted the colonel with sparkling eyes.
"I DON'T CHOOSE.
"Hear me!" she continued firmly. "With his name and my own mistress,
and the girl, as I believed, properly provided for and ignorant of my
existence, I saw no necessity for reopening the past. I resolved to
lead a new life as his widow. I came north. In the little New England
town where I first stopped, the country people contracted my name to
Mrs. Argalls. I let it stand so. I came to New York and entered the
service of the Lord and the bonds of the Church, Henry Pendleton, as
Mrs. Argalls, and have remained so ever since."
"But you would not object to Yerba knowing that you lived, and rightly
bore her father's name?" said Pendleton eagerly.
The woman looked at him with compressed lips. "I should. I have
buried all my past, and all its consequences. Let me not seek to
reopen it or recall them."
"But if you knew that she was as proud as yourself, and that this very
uncertainty as to her name and parentage, although she has never known
the whole truth, kept her from taking the name and becoming the wife of
a man whom she loves?"
"Whom she loves!"
"Yes; one of her guardians---Hathaway--to whom you intrusted her when
she was a child."
"Paul Hathaway--but HE knew it."
"Yes. But SHE does not know he does. He has kept the secret
faithfully, even when she refused him."
She was silent for a moment, and then said,--
"So be it. I consent."
"And you'll write to her?" said the colonel eagerly.
"No. But YOU may, and if you want them I will furnish you with such
proofs as you may require."
"Thank you." He held out his hand with such a happy yet childish
gratitude upon his worn face that her own trembled slightly as she took
it. "Good-by!"
"I shall see you soon," she said.
"I shall be here," he said grimly.
"I think not," she returned, with the first relaxation of her smileless
face, and moved away.
As she passed out she asked to see the house surgeon. How soon did he
think the patient she had been conversing with could be removed from
the hospital with safety? Did Mrs. Argalls mean "far?" Mrs. Argalls
meant as far as THAT--tendering her card and eminently respectable
address. Ah!--perhaps in a week. Not before? Perhaps before, unless
complications ensued; the patient had been much run down physically,
though, as Mrs. Argalls had probably noticed, he was singularly strong
in nervous will force. Mrs. Argalls HAD noticed it, and considered it
an extraordinary case of conviction--worthy of the closest watching and
care. When he was able to be moved she would send her own carriage and
her own physician to superintend his transfer. In the mean time he was
to want for nothing. Certainly, he had given very little trouble, and,
in fact, wanted very little. Just now he had only asked for paper,
pens, and ink.