IN WHICH IS REVEALED THE ONE ERROR THAT BROUGHT SO MUCH SUFFERING UPON
MANY.
Mr. Fitzgerald sees that his last remark is having no very good effect
on Madame Montford, and hastens to qualify, ere it overcome her. "That,
I may say, Madame, was not the last of her. My wife and me, seeing how
her mind was going wrong again, got her in bed for the night, and took
what care of her we could. Well, you see, she got rational in the
morning, and, thinking it a chance, I 'plied a heap of kindness to her,
and got her to tell all she knew of herself. She went on to tell where
she lived--I followed your directions in questioning her--at the time
you noted down. She described the house exactly. I have been to it
to-night; knew it at a sight, from her description. Some few practical
questions I put to her about the child you wanted to get at, I found
frightened her so that she kept shut--for fear, I take it, that it was a
crime she may be punished for at some time. I says, 'You was trusted
with a child once, wasn't you?' 'The Lord forgive me,' she says, 'I know
I'm guilty--but I've been punished enough in this world haven't I?' And
she burst out into tears, and hung down her head, and got into the
corner, as if wantin' nobody to see her. She only wanted a little good
care, and a little kindness, to bring her to. This we did as well as we
could, and made her understand that no one thought of punishing her, but
wanted to be her friends. Well, the poor wretch began to pick up, as I
said before, and in three days was such another woman that nobody could
have told that she was the poor crazy thing that ran about the lanes and
alleys of the Points. And now, Madame, doing as you bid me, I thought it
more practical to come to you, knowing you could get of her all you
wanted. She is made comfortable. Perhaps you wouldn't like to have her
brought here--I may say I don't think it would be good policy. If you
would condescend to come to our house, you can see her alone. I hope you
are satisfied with my services." The detective pauses, and again wipes
his face.
"My gratitude for your perseverance I can never fully express to you. I
owe you a debt I never can repay. To-morrow, at ten o'clock, I will meet
you at your house; and then, if you can leave me alone with her--"
"Certainly, certainly, everything will be at your service, Madame,"
returns the detective, rising from his seat and thanking the lady, who
rewards him bountifully from her purse, and bids him good night. The
servant escorts him to the door, while Madame Montford buries her face
in her hands, and gives vent to her emotions.
On the morning following, a neatly-caparisoned carriage is seen driving
to the door of a little brick house in Crosby street. From it Madame
Montford alights, and passes in at the front door, while in another
minute it rolls away up the street and is lost to sight. A few moments'
consultation, and the detective, who has ushered the lady into his
humbly-furnished little parlor, withdraws to give place to the pale and
emaciated figure of the woman Munday, who advances with faltering step
and downcast countenance. "Oh! forgive me, forgive me! have mercy upon
me! forgive me this crime!" she shrieks. Suddenly she raises her eyes,
and rushing forward throws herself at Madame Montford's feet, in an
imploring attitude. Dark and varied fancies crowd confusedly on Madame
Montford's mind at this moment.
"Nay, nay, my poor sufferer, rather I might ask forgiveness of you." She
takes the woman by the hand, and, with an air of regained calmness,
raises her from the floor. With her, the outer life seems preparing the
inner for what is to come. "But I have long sought you--sought you in
obedience to the demands of my conscience, which I would the world gave
me power to purify; and now I have found you, and with you some rest for
my aching heart. Come, sit down; forget what you have suffered; tell me
what befell you, and what has become of the child; tell me all, and
remember that I will provide for you a comfortable home for the rest of
your life." Madame motions her to a chair, struggling the while to
suppress her own feelings.
"I loved the child you intrusted to my care; yes, God knows I loved it,
and watched over it for two years, as carefully as a mother. But I was
poor, and the brother, in whose hands you intrusted the amount for its
support (this, the reader must here know, was not a brother, but the
paramour of Madame Montford), failed, and gave me nothing after the
first six months. I never saw him, and when I found you had gone
abroad--" The woman hesitates, and, with weeping eyes and trembling
voice, again implores forgiveness. "My husband gave himself up to
drink, lost his situation, and then he got to hating the child, and
abusing me for taking it, and embarrassing our scanty means of living.
Night and day, I was harassed and abused, despised and neglected. I was
discouraged, and gave up in despair. I clung to the child as long as I
could. I struggled, and struggled, and struggled--" Here the woman
pauses, and with a submissive look, again hangs down her head and sobs.
"Be calm, be calm," says Madame Montford, drawing nearer to her, and
making an effort to inspirit her. "Throw off all your fears, forget what
you have suffered, for I, too, have suffered. And you parted with the
child?"
"Necessity forced me," pursues the woman, shaking her head. "I saw only
the street before me on one side, and felt only the cold pinchings of
poverty on the other. You had gone abroad--"
"It was my intention to have adopted the child as my own when I
returned," interrupts Madame Montford, still clinging to that flattering
hope in which the criminal sees a chance of escape.
"And I," resumes the woman, "left the husband who neglected me, and who
treated me cruelly, and gave myself,--perhaps I was to blame for it,--up
to one who befriended me. He was the only one who seemed to care for me,
or to have any sympathy for me. But he, like myself, was poor; and,
being compelled to flee from our home, and to live in obscurity, where
my husband could not find me out, the child was an incumbrance I had no
means of supporting. I parted with her--yes, yes, I parted with her to
Mother Bridges, who kept a stand at a corner in West street--"
"And then what became of her?" again interposes Madame Montford. The
woman assumes a sullenness, and it is some time before she can be got to
proceed.
"My conscience rebuked me," she resumes, as if indifferent about
answering the question, "for I loved the child as my own; and the friend
I lived with, and who followed the sea, printed on its right arm two
hearts and a broken anchor, which remain there now. My husband died of
the cholera, and the friend I had taken to, and who treated me kindly,
also died, and I soon found myself an abandoned woman, an outcast--yes,
ruined forever, and in the streets, leading a life that my own feelings
revolted at, but from which starvation only seemed the alternative. My
conscience rebuked me again and again, and something--I cannot tell what
it was--impelled me with an irresistible force to watch over the
fortunes of the child I knew must come to the same degraded life
necessity--perhaps it was my own false step--had forced upon me. I
watched her a child running neglected about the streets, then I saw her
sold to Hag Zogbaum, who lived in Pell street; I never lost sight of
her--no, I never lost sight of her, but fear of criminating myself kept
me from making myself known to her. When I had got old in vice, and
years had gone past, and she was on the first step to the vice she had
been educated to, we shared the same roof. Then she was known as Anna
Bonard--"
"Anna Bonard!" exclaims Madame Montford. "Then truly it is she who now
lives in Charleston! There is no longer a doubt. I may seek and claim
her, and return her to at least a life of comfort."
"There you will find her. Ah, many times have I looked upon her, and
thought if I could only save her, how happy I could die. I shared the
same roof with her in Charleston, and when I got sick she was kind to
me, and watched over me, and was full of gentleness, and wept over her
condition. She has sighed many a time, and said how she wished she knew
how she came into the world, to be forced to live despised by the world.
But I got down, down, down, from one step to another, one step to
another, as I had gone up from one step to another in the splendor of
vice, until I found myself, tortured in mind and body, a poor neglected
wretch in the Charleston Poor-house. In it I was treated worse than a
slave, left, sick and heart-broken, and uncared-for, to the preying of a
fever that destroyed my mind. And as if that were not enough, I was
carried into the dungeons--the 'mad cells,'--and chained. And this
struck such a feeling of terror into my soul that my reason, as they
said, was gone forever. But I got word to Anna, and she came to me, and
gave me clothes and many little things to comfort me, and got me out,
and gave me money to get back to New York, where I have been ever since,
haunted from place to place, with scarce a place to lay my head. Surely
I have suffered. Shall I be forgiven?" Her voice here falters, she
becomes weak, and seems sinking under the burden of her emotions.
"If,--if--if," she mutters, incoherently, "you can save me, and forgive
me, you will have the prayers of one who has drank deep of the bitter
cup." She looks up with a sad, melancholy countenance, again implores
forgiveness, and bursts into loud sobs.
"Mine is the guilty part--it is me who needs forgiveness!" speaks Madame
Montford, pressing the hand of the forlorn woman, as the tears stream
down her cheeks. She has unburdened her emotions, but such is the
irresistible power of a guilty conscience that she finds her crushed
heart and smitten frame sinking under the shock--that she feels the very
fever of remorse mounting to her brain.
"Be calm, be calm--for you have suffered, wandered through the dark
abyss--truly you have been chastened enough in this world. But while
your heart is only bruised and sore, mine is stung deep and lacerated.
The image of that child now rises up before me. I see her looking back
over her chequered life, and pining to know her birthright. Mine is the
task of seeking her out, reconciling her, saving her from this life of
shame. I must sacrifice the secrets of my own heart, go boldly in
pursuit of her--" She pauses a moment. There is yet a thin veil between
her and society. Society only founds its suspicions upon the mystery
involved in the separation from her husband, and the doubtful character
of her long residence in Europe. Society knows nothing of the birth of
the child. The scandal leveled at her in Charleston, was only the result
of her own indiscretion. "Yes," she whispers, attempting at the same
time to soothe the feelings of the poor disconsolate woman, "I must go,
and go quickly--I must drag her from the terrible life she is
leading;--but, ah! I must do it so as to shield myself. Yes, I must
shield myself!" And she puts into the woman's hand several pieces of
gold, saying: "take this!--to-morrow you will be better provided for. Be
silent. Speak to no one of what has passed between us, nor make the
acquaintance of any one outside the home I shall provide for you." Thus
saying, she recalls Mr. Detective Fitzgerald, rewards him with a nostrum
from her purse, and charges him to make the woman comfortable at her
expense.
"Her mind, now I do believe," says the detective, with an approving
toss of the head, "her faculties'll come right again,--they only wants a
little care and kindness, mum." The detective thanks her again and
again, then puts the money methodically into his pocket.
The carriage having returned, Madame Montford vaults into it as quickly
as she alighted, and is rolled away to her mansion.