PROVIDENCE

Had I suspected this? Had all my efforts for the last half-hour been for

the purpose of entrapping her into some such avowal? I do not know. My

own feelings at the time are a mystery to me; I blundered on, with a

blow here and a blow there, till I hit this woman in a vital spot, and

achieved the above mentioned result.

I was not happy when I reached it. I felt no elation; scarcely any

relief. It all seemed so impossible. She marked the signs of incredulity

in my face and spoke up quickly, almost sharply:

"You do not believe me. I will prove the truth of what I say.

Wait--wait!"--and running to a closet, she pulled out a drawer--where

was her weakness now?--and brought from it a pair of soiled white

slippers. "If the house had been ransacked," she proceeded pantingly,

"these would have told their own tale. I was shocked when I saw their

condition, and kept my guests waiting till I changed them. Oh, they will

fit the footprints." Her smile was ghastly. Softly she set the shoes

down. "Mrs. Carew helped me; she went for the child at night. Oh, we are

in a terrible strait, we two, unless you will stand by us like a

friend--and you will do that, won't you, Mr. Trevitt? No one else knows

what I have just confessed--not even Doctor Pool, though he suspects me

in ways I never dreamed of. Money shall not stand in the way--I have a

fortune of my own now--nothing shall stand in the way, if you will have

pity on Mrs. Carew and myself and help us to preserve our secret."

"Madam, what secret? I pray you to make me acquainted with the whole

matter in all its details before you ask my assistance."

"Then you do not know it?"

"Not altogether, and I must know it altogether. First, what has become

of the child?"

"She is safe and happy. You have seen her; you mentioned doing so just

now."

"Harry?"

"Harry."

I rose before her in intense excitement. What a plot! I stood aghast at

its daring and the success it had so nearly met with.

"I've had moments of suspicion," I admitted, after a short examination

of this beautiful woman's face for the marks of strength which her part

in this plot seemed to call for. "But they all vanished before Mrs.

Carew's seemingly open manner and the perfect boyishness of the child.

Is she an actress too--Gwendolen?"

"Not when she plays horse and Indian and other boyish games. She is only

acting out her nature. She has no girl tastes; she is all boy, and it

was by means of these instincts that Mrs. Carew won her. She promised

her that if she would leave home and go with her to Europe she would cut

her hair and call her Harry, and dress her so that every one would think

her a boy. And she promised her something else--that she should go to

her father--Gwendolen idolizes Mr. Ocumpaugh."

"But--"

"I know. You wonder why, if I loved my husband, I should send away the

one cherished object of his life. It is because our love was threatened

by this very object. I saw nothing but death and chaos before me if I

kept her. My husband adores the child, but he hates and despises a

falsehood and my secret was threatened by the one man who knows it--your

Doctor Pool. My accomplice once, he declared himself ready to become my

accuser if the child remained under the Ocumpaugh roof one day after the

date he fixed for her removal."

"Ah!" I ejaculated, with sudden comprehension of the full meaning of the

scrawls I had seen in so many parts of the grounds. "And by what right

did he demand this? What excuse did he give you? His wish for money,

immense money--old miser that he is!"

"No; for money I could have given him. His motive is a less tangible

one. He has scruples, he says--religious scruples following a change of

heart. Oh, he was a cruel man to meet, determined, inexorable. I could

not move or influence him. The proffer of money only hurt my cause. A

fraud had been perpetrated, he said, and Mr. Ocumpaugh must know it.

Would I confess the truth to him myself? No. Then he would do so for me

and bring proofs to substantiate his statements. I thought all was

lost--my husband's confidence, his love, his pleasure even in the child,

for it was his own blood that he loved in her, and her connection with

his family of whose prestige he has an exaggerated idea. Made desperate

by the thought, I faced this cruel doctor--(it was in his own office; he

had presumed upon that old secret linking us together to summon me

there)--and told him solemnly that rather than do this I would kill

myself. And he almost bade me, 'Kill!' but refrained when the word had

half left his lips and changed it to a demand for the child's immediate

removal from the benefits it enjoyed under false pretenses."

And from this Mrs. Ocumpaugh went on to relate how he had told her that

Gwendolen had inherited fortunes because she was believed to be an

Ocumpaugh; that not being an Ocumpaugh she must never handle those

fortunes, winding up with some such language as this: "Manage it how you

will, only relieve me from the oppression of feeling myself a party to

the grossest of deceptions. Can not the child run away and be lost? I am

willing to aid you in that, even to paying for her bringing up in some

decent, respectable way, such as would probably have been her lot if you

had not interfered to place her in the way of millions." It was a mad

thought, half meant and apparently wholly impossible to carry out

without raising suspicions as damaging as confession itself. But it took

an immediate hold upon the miserable woman he addressed, though she gave

little evidence of it, for he proceeded to add in a hard tone: "That or

immediate confession to your husband, with me by to substantiate your

story. No slippery woman's tricks will go down with me. Fix the date

here and now and I promise to stand back and await the result in total

silence. Dally with it by so much as an hour, and I am at your gates

with a story that all must hear." Is it a matter of wonder that the

stricken woman, without counsel and prohibited, from the very nature of

her secret, from seeking counsel, uttered the first one that came to

mind and went home to brood over her position and plan how she could

satisfy his demands with the least cost to herself, her husband and the

child?

Mr. Ocumpaugh was in Europe. This was her one point of comfort. What

was done could be done in his absence, and this fact greatly minimized

any risk she was likely to incur. When he returned he would find the

house in mourning, for she had already decided within herself that only

by apparent death could this child be safely robbed of her endowments as

an Ocumpaugh and an heiress. He would grieve, but his grief would lack

the sting of shame, and so in course of time would soften into a lovely

memory of one who had been as the living sunshine to him and, like the

sunshine, brief in its shining. Thus and thus only could she show her

consideration for him. For herself no consideration was possible. It

must always be her fate to know the child alive yet absolutely removed

from her. This was a sorrow capable of no alleviation, for Gwendolen was

passionately dear to her, all the dearer, perhaps, because the

mother-thirst had never been satisfied; because she had held the cup in

hand but had never been allowed to drink. The child's future--how to rob

her of all she possessed, yet secure her happiness and the prospect of

an honorable estate--ah, there was the difficulty! and one she quite

failed to solve till, in a paroxysm of terror and despair, after five

sleepless nights, she took Mrs. Carew into her confidence and implored

her aid.

The free, resourceful, cheery nature of the broader-minded woman saw

through the difficulty at once. "Give her to me," she cried. "I love

little children passionately and have always grieved over my childless

condition. I will take Gwendolen, raise her and fill her little heart so

full of love she will never miss the magnificence she has been brought

to look upon as her birthright. Only I shall have to leave this

vicinity--perhaps the country."

"And you would be willing?" asked the poor mother--mother by right of

many years of service, if not of blood.

The answer broke her heart though it was only a smile. But such a

smile--confident, joyous, triumphant; the smile of a woman who has got

her heart's wish, while she, she, must henceforth live childless.

So that was settled, but not the necessary ways and means of

accomplishment; those came only with time. The two women had always been

friends, so their frequent meetings in the green boudoir did not waken

a suspicion. A sudden trip to Europe was decided on by Mrs. Carew and by

degrees the whole plot perfected. In her eyes it looked feasible enough

and they both anticipated complete success. Having decided that the

scheme as planned by them could be best carried out in the confusion of

a great entertainment, cards were sent out for the sixteenth, the date

agreed upon in the doctor's office as the one which should see a

complete change in Gwendolen's prospects. It was also settled that on

the same day Mrs. Carew should bring home, from a certain small village

in Connecticut, her little nephew who had lately been left an orphan.

There was no deception about this nephew. Mrs. Carew had for some time

supplied his needs and paid for his board in the farm-house where he had

been left, and in the emergency which had just come up, she took care to

publish to all her friends that she was going to bring him home and take

him with her to Europe. Further, a market-man and woman with whom Mrs.

Carew had had dealings for years were persuaded to call at her house

shortly after three that afternoon, to take this nephew of hers by a

circuitous and prolonged ride through the country to an institution in

which she had had him entered under an assumed name. All this in one

day.

Meanwhile Mrs. Carew undertook to open with her own hands a passage from

the cellar of the bungalow into the long closed room behind the

partition. This was to insure such a safe retreat for the child during

the first search, that by no possibility could anything be found to

contradict the testimony of the little shoe which Mrs. Ocumpaugh

purposed presenting to all eyes as found on the slope leading to that

great burial-place, the river. Otherwise the child might have been

passed over to Mrs. Carew at once. All this being decided upon, each

waited to perform the part assigned her--Mrs. Carew in a fever of

delight--for she was passionately devoted to Gwendolen and experienced

nothing but rapture at the prospect of having this charming child all to

herself--Mrs. Ocumpaugh, whose only recompense would be freedom from a

threatening exposure which would cost her the only thing she prized, her

husband's love, in a condition of cold dread, relieved only by the

burning sense of the necessity of impressing upon the whole world, and

especially upon Mr. Ocumpaugh, an absolute belief in the child's death.

This was her first care. To this her mind clung with an agony of purpose

which was the fittest preparation possible for real display of feeling

when the time came. But she forgot one thing--they both forgot one

thing--that chance or Providence might ordain that witnesses should be

on the road below Homewood to prove that the child did not cross the

track at the time of her disappearance. To them it seemed enough to

plead the child's love for the water, her desire to be allowed to fish,

the opportunity given her to escape, and--the little shoes. Such

short-sightedness in face of a great peril could be pardoned Mrs.

Ocumpaugh on the verge of delirium under her cold exterior, but Mrs.

Carew should have taken this possibility into account; and would have

done so, probably, had she not been completely absorbed in the part she

would be called upon to play when the exchange of children should be

made and Gwendolen be intrusted to her charge within a dozen rods of her

own home. This she could dwell on with the whole force of her mind;

this she could view in all its relations and make such a study of as to

provide herself against all contingencies. But the obvious danger of a

gang of men being placed just where they could serve as witnesses, in

contradiction of the one fact upon which the whole plot was based, never

even struck her imagination.

The nursery-governess whose heart was divided between her duty to the

child and her strong love of music, was chosen as their unconscious

accomplice in this fraud. As the time for the great musicale approached,

she was bidden to amuse Gwendolen in the bungalow, with the

understanding that if the child fell asleep she might lay her on the

divan, and so far leave her as to take her place on the bench outside

where the notes of the solo singers could reach her. That Gwendolen

would fall asleep and fall asleep soon, the wretched mother well knew,

for she had given her a safe but potent sleeping draft which could not

fail to insure a twelve hours' undisturbed slumber to so healthy a

child. The fact that the little one had shrunk more than ever from her

attentions that morning both hurt and encouraged her. Certainly it

would make it easier for Mrs. Carew to influence Gwendolen. In her own

mind filled with terrible images of her husband's grief and her long

prospective dissimulation, one picture rose in brilliant contrast to the

dark one embodying her own miserable future and that of the soon-to-be

bereaved father. It was that of the perfect joy of the hungry-hearted

child in the arms of the woman she loved best. It brought her cheer--it

brought her anguish. It was a salve to her conscience and a mortal

thrust in an already festering wound. She shut it from her eyes as much

as possible,--and so, the hour came.

We know its results--how far the scheme succeeded and whence its great

failure arose. Gwendolen fell asleep almost immediately on reaching the

bungalow and Miss Graham, dreaming no harm and having the most perfect

confidence in Mrs. Ocumpaugh, took advantage of the permission she had

received, and slipped outside to sit on the bench and listen to the

music. Presently Mrs. Ocumpaugh appeared, saying that she had left her

guests for a moment just to take a look at Gwendolen and see if all were

well with her.

As she needed no attendance, Miss Graham might stay where she was. And

Miss Graham did, taking great pleasure in the music, which was the

finest she had ever heard. Meanwhile Mrs. Ocumpaugh entered the

bungalow, and, untying the child's shoes as she had frequently done

before when she found her asleep, she lifted her and carried her just as

she was down the trap, the door of which she had previously raised. The

darkness lurking in such places, a darkness which had rendered it so

impenetrable at midnight, was relieved to some extent in daylight by

means of little grated openings in the wall under the beams, so that her

chief difficulty lay in holding up her long dress and sustaining the

heavy child at the same time. But the exigency of the moment and her

apprehension lest Miss Graham should reenter the bungalow before she

could finish her task and escape, gave great precision to her movements,

and in an incredibly short space of time she had reached those musty

precincts which, if they should not prove the death of the child, would

safely shelter her from every one's eye, till the first excitement of

her loss was over, and the conviction of her death by drowning became a

settled fact in every mind.

Mrs. Ocumpaugh's return was a flight. She had brought one of the little

shoes with her, concealed in a pocket she had made especially for it in

the trimmings of her elaborate gown. She found the bungalow empty, the

trap still raised, and Miss Graham, toward whom she cast a hurried look

through the window, yet in her place, listening with enthralled

attention to the great tenor upon whose magnificent singing Mrs.

Ocumpaugh had relied for the successful carrying out of what she and

Mrs. Carew considered the most critical part of the plot. So far then,

all was well. She had but to drop the trap-door carefully to its place,

replace the corner of the carpet she had pulled up, push down with her

foot the two or three nails she had previously loosened, and she would

be quite at liberty to quit the place and return to her guests.

But she found that this was not as easy as she had imagined. The clogs

of a terrible, almost a criminal, consciousness held back her steps. She

stumbled as she left the bungalow and stopped to catch her breath as if

the oppression of the room in which she had immured her darling had

infected the sunny air of this glorious day and made free breathing an

impossibility. The weights on her feet were so palpable to her that she

unconsciously looked down at them. This was how she came to notice the

dust on her shoes. Alive to the story it told, she burst the spell which

held her and made a bound toward the house.

Rushing to her room she shook her skirts and changed her shoes, and thus

freed from all connecting links with that secret spot, reentered among

her guests, as beautiful and probably as wretched a woman as the world

contained that day.

Yet not as wretched as she could be. There were depths beneath these

depths. If he should ever know! If he should ever come to look at her

with horrified, even alienated eyes! Ah, that were the end--that would

mean the river for her--the river which all were so soon to think had

swallowed the little Gwendolen. Was that Miss Graham coming? Was the

stir she now heard outside, the first indication of the hue and cry

which would soon ring through the whole place and her shrinking heart

as well? No, no, not yet. She could still smile, must smile and smite

her two glove-covered hands together in simulated applause of notes and

tones she did not even hear. And no one noted anything strange in that

smile or in that gracious bringing together of hands, which if any one

had had the impulse to touch--

But no one thought of doing that. A heart may bleed drop by drop to its

death in our full sight without our suspecting it, if the eyes above it

still beam with natural brightness. And hers did that. She had always

been called impassive. God be thanked that no warmth was expected from

her and that no one would suspect the death she was dying, if she did

not cry out. But the moment came when she did cry out. Miss Graham

entered, told her story, and all Mrs. Ocumpaugh's pent-up agony burst

its bounds in a scream which to others seemed but the natural outburst

of an alarmed mother. She fled to the bungalow, because that seemed the

natural thing to do, and never forgetting what was expected of her,

cried aloud in presence of its emptiness: "The river! the river!" and

went stumbling down the bank.

The shoe was near her hand and she drew it out as she went on. When they

found her she had fainted; the excess of excitement has this natural

outcome. She did not have to play a part, the humiliation of her own

deed and the terrors yet to come were eating up her very soul. Then came

the blow, the unexpected, overwhelming blow of finding that the

deception planned with such care--a deception upon the success of which

the whole safety of the scheme depended--was likely to fail just for the

simple reason that a dozen men could swear that the child had never

crossed the track. She was dazed--confounded. Mrs. Carew was not by to

counsel her; she had her own part in this business to play; and Mrs.

Ocumpaugh, conscious of being mentally unfit for any new planning,

conscious indeed of not being able to think at all, simply followed her

instinct and held to the old cry in face of proof, of persuasion, of

reason even; and so, did the very wisest thing possible, no one

expecting reason in a mother reeling under such a vital shock.

But the cooler, more subtile and less guilty Mrs. Carew had some

judgment left, if her friend had lost hers. Her own part had been well

played. She had brought her nephew home without giving any one, not even

the maid she had provided herself with in New York, an opportunity to

see his face; and she had passed him over, dressed in quite different

clothes, to the couple in the farm-wagon, who had carried him, as she

supposed, safely out of reach and any possibility of discovery. You see

her calculations failed here also. She did not credit the doctor with

even the little conscience he possessed, and, unconscious of his near

waiting on the highway in anxious watch for the event concerning which

he had his own secret doubts, she deluded herself into thinking that all

they had to fear was a continuation of the impression that Gwendolen had

not gone down to the river and been drowned.

When, therefore, she had acted out her little part--received the

searching party and gone with them all over the house even to the door

of the room where she said her little nephew was resting after his

journey--(Did they look in? Perhaps, and perhaps not, it mattered

little, for the bed had been arranged against this contingency and no

one but a detective bent upon ferreting out crime would have found it

empty)--she asked herself how she could strengthen the situation and

cause the theory advanced by Mrs. Ocumpaugh to be received,

notwithstanding the evidence of seeming eye-witnesses. The result was

the throwing of a second shoe into the water as soon as it was dark

enough for her to do this unseen. As she had to approach the river by

her own grounds, and as she was obliged to choose a place sufficiently

remote from the lights about the dock not to incur the risk of being

detected in her hazardous attempt, the shoe fell at a spot farther down

stream than the searchers had yet reached, and the intense excitement I

had myself seen in Mrs. Ocumpaugh's face the day I made my first visit

to Homewood, sprang from the agony of suspense with which she watched,

after twenty-four hours of alternating expectation and disappointment,

the finding of this second shoe which, with fanatic confidence, she

hoped would bring all the confirmation to be desired of her oft-repeated

declaration that the child would yet be found in the river.

Meanwhile, to the infinite dismay of both, the matter had been placed in

the hands of the police and word sent to Mr. Ocumpaugh, not that the

child was dead, but missing. This meant world-wide publicity and the

constant coming and going about Homewood of the very men whose insight

and surveillance were most to be dreaded. Mrs. Ocumpaugh sank under the

terrors thus accumulating upon her; but Mrs. Carew, of different

temperament and history, rose to meet them with a courage which bade

fair to carry everything before it.

As midnight approached (the hour agreed upon in their compact) she

prepared to go for Gwendolen. Mrs. Ocumpaugh, who had not forgotten what

was expected of her at that hour, roused as the clock struck twelve, and

uttering a loud cry, rushed from her place in the window down to the

lawn, calling out that she had heard the men shout aloud from the boats.

Her plan was to draw every one who chanced to be about, down to the

river bank, in order to give Mrs. Carew full opportunity to go and come

unseen on her dangerous errand. And she apparently succeeded in this,

for by the time she had crept back in seeming disappointment to the

house, a light could be seen burning behind a pink shade in one of Mrs.

Carew's upper windows--the signal agreed upon between them of the

presence of Gwendolen in her new home.

But small was the relief as yet. The shoe had not been found, and at any

moment some intruder might force his way into Mrs. Carew's house and, in

spite of all her precautions, succeed in obtaining a view of the little

Harry and recognize in him the missing child.

Of these same precautions some mention must be made. The artful widow

had begun by dismissing all her help, giving as an excuse her speedy

departure for Europe, and the colored girl she had brought up from New

York saw no difference in the child running about the house in its

little velvet suit from the one who, with bound-up face and a heavy

shade over his eyes, came up in the cars with her in Mrs. Carew's lap.

Her duties being limited to a far-off watch on the child to see that it

came to no harm, she was the best witness possible in case of police

intrusion or neighborhood gossip. As for Gwendolen herself, the novelty

of the experience and the prospect held out by a speedy departure to

"papa's country" kept her amused and even hilarious. She laughed when

her hair was cut short, darkened and parted. She missed but one thing,

and that was her pet plaything which she used to carry to bed with her

at night. The lack of this caused some tears--a grief which was divined

by Mrs. Ocumpaugh, who took pains to assuage it in the manner we all

know.

But this was after the finding of the second shoe; the event so long

anticipated and so little productive. Somehow, neither Mrs. Carew nor

Mrs. Ocumpaugh had taken into consideration the fact of the child's

shoes being rights and lefts, and when this attempt to second the first

deception was decided on, it was thought a matter of congratulation that

Gwendolen had been supplied with two pairs of the same make and that one

pair yet remained in her closet. The mate of that shown by Mrs.

Ocumpaugh was still on the child's foot in the bungalow, but there being

no difference in any of them, what was simpler than to take one of these

and fling it where it would be found. Alas! the one seized upon by Mrs.

Carew was for the same foot as that already shown and commented on, and

thus this second attempt failed even more completely than the first, and

people began to cry, "A conspiracy!"

And a conspiracy it was, but one which might yet have succeeded if

Doctor Pool's suspicion of Mrs. Ocumpaugh's intentions, and my own

secret knowledge of Mrs. Ocumpaugh's real position toward this child,

could have been eliminated from the situation. But with those two

factors against them, detection had crept upon them in unknown ways, and

neither Mrs. Ocumpaugh's frantic clinging to the theory she had so

recklessly advanced, nor Mrs. Carew's determined effort to meet

suspicion with the brave front calculated to disarm it, was of any

avail. The truth would have its way and their secret stood revealed.

This was the story told me by Mrs. Ocumpaugh; not in the continuous and

detailed manner I have here set down, but in disjointed sentences and

wild bursts of disordered speech. When it was finished she turned upon

me eyes full of haggard inquiry.

"Our fate is in your hands," she falteringly declared. "What will you do

with it?"

It was the hardest question which had ever been put me. For minutes I

contemplated her in a silence which must have been one prolonged agony

to her. I did not see my way; I did not see my duty. Then the fifty

thousand dollars!

At last, I replied as follows:

"Mrs. Ocumpaugh, if you will let me advise you, as a man intensely

interested in the happiness of yourself and husband, I would suggest

your meeting him at quarantine and telling him the whole truth."

"I would rather die," said she.

"Yet only by doing what I suggest can you find any peace in life. The

consciousness that others know your secret will come between you and any

satisfaction you can ever get out of your husband's continued

confidence. A wrong has been done; you are the only one to right it."

"I can not. I can die, but I can not do that."

And for a minute I thought she would die then and there.

"Doctor Pool is a fanatic; he will pursue you until he is assured that

the child is in good hands."

"You can assure him of that now."

"Next month his exactions may take another direction. You can never

trust a man who thinks he has a mission. Pardon my presumption. No

mercenary motive prompts what I am saying now."

"So you intend to publish my story, if I do not?"

I hesitated again. Such questions can not be decided in a moment. Then,

with a certain consciousness of doing right, I answered earnestly:

"To no one but to Mr. Ocumpaugh do I feel called upon to disclose what

really concerns no one but yourself and him."

Her hands rose toward me in a gesture which may have been an expression

of gratitude or only one of simple appeal.

"He is not due until Saturday," I added gently.

No answer from the cold lips. I do not think she could have spoken if

she had tried.