"Mrs. Ocumpaugh has a right to the privilege of seeing what I have
sketched there," I said with what impressiveness I could, though my
heart was heavy with doubt. "Will you believe that what I ask is for the
best and take this envelope to her? It may mean the ultimate restoration
of her child."
"This paper?"
"Yes, Miss Porter."
She did not try to hide her incredulity.
"I do not see how a picture--yet you seem very much in earnest--and I
know she has confidence in you, she and Mr. Ocumpaugh, too. I will take
it to her if you can assure me that good will come of it and no more
false hopes to destroy the little courage she has left."
"I can not promise that. I believe that she will wish to receive me and
hear all I have to say after seeing what that envelope contains. That is
as far as I can honestly go."
"It does not satisfy me. If it were not for the nearness of Mr.
Ocumpaugh's return, I would have nothing to do with it. He must hear at
Sandy Hook that some definite news has been received of his child."
"You are right, Miss Porter, he must."
"He idolized Gwendolen. He is a man of strong feelings; very passionate
and much given to follow the impulse of the moment. If his suspense is
not ended at the earliest possible instant, the results may be such as I
dare not contemplate."
"I know it; that is why I have pushed matters to this point. You will
carry that up to her?"
"Yes; and if--"
"No ifs. Lay it before her where she sits and come away. But not beyond
call. You are a good woman--I see it in your face--do not watch her as
she unfolds this paper. Persons of her temperament do not like to have
their emotions observed, and this will cause her emotion. That can not
be helped, Miss Porter. Sincerely and honestly I tell you that it is
impossible for her best friends to keep her from suffering now; they can
only strive to keep that suffering from becoming permanent."
"It is a hard task you have set me," complained the poor woman; "but I
will do what I can. Anything must be better for Mrs. Ocumpaugh than the
suspense she is now laboring under."
"Remember," I enjoined, with the full force of my secret anxiety, "that
no eye but hers must fall upon this drawing. Not that it would convey
meaning to anybody but herself, but because it is her affair and her
affair only, and you are the woman to respect another person's affairs."
She gave me a final scrutinizing look and left the room.
"God grant that I have made no mistake!" was the inward prayer with
which I saw her depart.
My fervency was sincere. I was myself frightened at what I had done.
And what had I done? Sent her a sketch drawn by myself of Doctor Pool
and of his office. If it recalled to her, as I felt it must, the
remembrance of a certain memorable visit she had once paid there, she
would receive me.
When Miss Porter reentered some fifteen minutes later, I saw that my
hazardous attempt had been successful.
"Come," said she; but with no cheerful alacrity, rather with an air of
gloom.
"Was--was Mrs. Ocumpaugh very much disturbed by what she saw?"
"I fear so. She was half-asleep when I went in, dreaming as it seemed,
and pleasantly. It was cruel to disturb her; indeed I had not the heart,
so I just laid the folded paper near her hand and waited, but not too
near, not within sight of her face. A few minutes later--interminable
minutes to me--I heard the paper rattle, but I did not move. I was where
she could see me, so she knew that she was not alone and presently I
caught the sound of a strange noise from her lips, then a low cry, then
the quick inquiry in sharper and more peremptory tones than I had ever
before heard from her, 'Where did this come from? Who has dared to send
me this?' I advanced quickly. I told her about you and your desire to
see her; how you had asked me to bring her up this little sketch so that
she would know that you had real business with her; that I regretted
troubling her when she felt so weak, but that you promised revelations
or some such thing--at which I thought she grew very pale. Are you quite
convinced that you have news of sufficient importance to warrant the
expectations you have raised in her?"
"Let me see her," I prayed.
She made a sign and we both left the room.
Mrs. Ocumpaugh awaited me in her own boudoir on the second floor. As we
went up the main staircase I was afforded short glimpses of room after
room of varying richness and beauty, among them, one so dainty and
delicate in its coloring that I presumed to ask if it were that of the
missing child.
Miss Porter's look as she shook her head roused my curiosity.
"I should be glad to see her room," I said.
She stopped, seemed to consider the matter for a moment, then advanced
quickly and, beckoning me to follow, led me to a certain door which she
quietly opened. One look, and my astonishment became apparent. The room
before me, while large and sunny, was as simple, I had almost said as
bare, as my sister's at home. No luxurious furnishings here, no
draperies of silk and damask, no half-lights drawing richness from
stained glass, no gleam of silver or sparkle of glass on bedecked
dresser or carved mantel. Not even the tinted muslins I had seen in some
nurseries; but a plain set of furniture on a plain carpet with but one
object of real adornment within the four walls. That was a picture of
the Madonna opposite the bed, and that was beautiful. But the frame was
of the cheapest--a simple band of oak.
Catching Miss Porter's eye as we quietly withdrew, I ventured to ask
whose taste this was.
The answer was short and had a decided ring of disapproval in it.
"Her mother's. Mrs. Ocumpaugh believes in simple surroundings for
children."
"Yet she dressed Gwendolen like a princess."
"Yes, for the world's eye. But in her own room she wore gingham aprons
which effectually covered up her ribbons and laces."
The motive for all this was in a way evident to me, but somehow what I
had just seen did not add to my courage for the coming interview.
We stopped at the remotest door of this long hall. As Miss Porter opened
it I summoned up all my nerve, and the next moment found myself standing
in the presence of the imposing figure of Mrs. Ocumpaugh drawn up in the
embrasure of a large window overlooking the Hudson. It was the same
window, doubtless, in which she had stood for two nights and a day
watching for some sign from the boats engaged in dragging the river-bed.
Her back was to me and she seemed to find it difficult to break away
from her fixed attitude; for several minutes elapsed before she turned
slowly about and showed me her face.
When she did, I stood appalled. Not a vestige of color was to be seen on
cheek, lip or brow. She was the beautiful Mrs. Ocumpaugh still, but the
heart which had sent the hues of life to her features, was beating
slow--slow--and the effect was heartbreaking to one who had seen her in
her prime and the full glory of her beauty as wife and mother.
"Pardon," I faltered out, bowing my head as if before some powerful
rebuke, though her lips were silent and her eyes pleading rather than
accusing. Truly, I had ventured far in daring to recall to this woman an
hour which at this miserable time she probably would give her very life
to forget. "Pardon," I repeated, with even a more humble intonation than
before, for she did not speak and I hardly knew how to begin the
conversation. Still she said nothing, and at last I found myself forced
to break the unbearable silence by some definite remark.
"I have presumed," I therefore continued, advancing but a step toward
her who made no advance at all, "to send you a hurried sketch of one who
says he knows you, that you might be sure I was not one of the many
eager but irresponsible men who offer help in your great trouble without
understanding your history or that of the little one to whose seemingly
unaccountable disappearance all are seeking a clue."
"My history!"
The words seemed forced from her, but no change in eye or look
accompanied them; nor could I catch a motion of her lips when she
presently added in a far-away tone inexpressibly affecting, "_Her_
history! Did he bid you say that?"
"Doctor Pool? He has given me no commands other than to find the child.
I am not here as an agent of his. I am here in Mr. Ocumpaugh's interest
and your own; with some knowledge--a little more knowledge than others
have perhaps--to aid me in the business of recovering this child. Madam,
the police are seeking her in the holes and slums of the great city and
at the hands of desperate characters who make a living out of the
terrors and griefs of the rich. But this is not where I should look for
Gwendolen Ocumpaugh. I should look nearer, just as you have looked
nearer; and I should use means which I am sure have not commended
themselves to the police. These means you can doubtless put in my hands.
A mother knows many things in connection with her child which she
neither thinks to impart nor would, under any ordinary circumstances,
give up, especially to a stranger. I am not a stranger; you have seen me
in Mr. Ocumpaugh's confidence; will you then pardon me if I ask what may
strike you as impertinent questions, but which may lead to the discovery
of the motive if not to the method of the little one's abduction?"
"I do not understand--" She was trying to shake off her apathy. "I feel
confused, sick, almost like one dying. How can I help? Haven't I done
everything? I believe that she strayed to the river and was drowned. I
still believe her dead. Otherwise we should have news--real news--and we
don't, we don't."
The intensity with which she uttered the last two words brought a line
of red into her gasping lips. She was becoming human, and for a minute I
could not help drawing a comparison between her and her friend Mrs.
Carew as the latter had just appeared to me in her little half-denuded
house on the other side of the hedge-row. Both beautiful, but owing
their charms to quite different sources, I surveyed this woman, white
against the pale green of the curtain before which she stood, and
imperceptibly but surely the glowing attractions of the gay-hearted
widow who had found a child to love, faded before the cold loveliness of
this bereaved mother, wan with suffering and alive with terrors of whose
depth I could judge from the clutch with which she still held my little
sketch.
Meanwhile I had attempted some kind of answer to Mrs. Ocumpaugh's
heart-rending appeal.
"We do not hear because she was not taken from you simply for the money
her return would bring. Indeed, after hours of action and considerable
thinking, I am beginning to doubt if she was taken for money at all. Can
you not think of some other motive? Do you not know of some one who
wanted the child from--_love_, let us say?"
"Love?"
Did her lips frame it, or did I see it in her eyes? Certainly I heard no
sound, yet I was conscious that she repeated the word in her mind, if
not aloud.
"I know I have startled you," I pursued. "But, pardon me--I can not help
my presumption--I must be personal--I must even go so far as to probe
the wound I have made. You have a claim to Gwendolen not to be doubted,
not to be gainsaid. But isn't there some one else who is conscious of
possessing certain claims also? I do not allude to Mr. Ocumpaugh."
"You mean--some relative--aunt--cousin--" She was fully human now, and
very keenly alert. "Mr. Rathbone, perhaps?"
"No, Mrs. Ocumpaugh, none of these." Then as the paper rattled in her
hand and I saw her eyes fall in terror on it, I said as calmly and
respectfully as I could: "You have a secret, Mrs. Ocumpaugh; that secret
I share."
The paper trembled from her clasp and fell fluttering downward. I
pointed at it and waited till our eyes met, possibly that I might give
her some encouragement from my look if not from my words.
"I was a boy in Doctor Pool's employ some five years ago, and one day--"