MIRIAM'S STORY.
A miserable attic chamber, dimly lighted by one dirty sky-light, a
miserable bed in one corner, a broken chair, an old wooden chest, a
rickety table, a few articles of delf, a tumble-down little cook-stove.
That was the picture Mollie Dane saw, standing on the threshold of
Miriam's room.
There was no deception this time. On that wretched bed lay the broken
and bruised figure of the woman Miriam, dying.
Her deep, labored breathing was painfully audible, even outside the
room; her strong chest rose and fell--every breath torture.
By her side sat the mother of the ragged boy, holding a drink to her
lips, and coaxing her to open her mouth and try to swallow.
In vivid contrast to all this poverty and abject wretchedness, the young
girl in the door-way stood, with her fair, blooming face, her fluttering
golden ringlets, her rich silken garments, and elegant air.
The woman by the bed turned round and stared for a moment; then--
"Be you the young lady as Mrs. Miriam sent my Sammy for?" she asked.
"Yes," said Mollie, coming forward. "How is she?"
"Bad as bad can be, miss. Won't never see another day, the doctor says."
"My poor Miriam--my poor Miriam!"
The slow tears gathered in her eyes as she bent above her and saw the
pinched, sharpened face, with the blue tinge of coming death already
dawning there.
"Be you a relation?" the woman asked, curiously. But Mollie did not
answer--she was stooping over the sick woman, absorbed.
"Miriam!" she said, softly, taking the skinny hand in both her
own--"Miriam, look up! Speak to me. It is I--your own Mollie."
The sound of that beloved voice penetrated the death fog already
blurring every faculty. The dulled eyes opened with a sudden, joyful
light of recognition.
"Mollie," she said, "my dear little Mollie. I knew you would come."
"I am very, very sorry to see you like this, Miriam. Do you suffer much
pain?"
"Not now--only a dull aching from head to foot. But even that will soon
be over. I am glad. My life has been nothing for the past sixteen years
but one long torment. I am glad it is so nearly done. Mollie," fixing
her haggard eyes solemnly on her face, "you know I will never see
another sunrise."
"My poor, poor Miriam!"
"Are you sorry for poor Miriam, Mollie?"
"Sorrier than sorry! What other relative have I in the wide world but
you?"
"Not one, Mollie. But I am a relative you need hardly grieve for. I have
been a bad, cruel woman--the worst woman that ever lived to you, my poor
little girl!"
"Miriam!"
"Ah! don't look at me with those innocent, wondering blue eyes! You
shall know all. I can't die with my story untold, my secret unrevealed.
Mrs. Slimmens, I have something very particular to say to this young
lady. Please to leave us alone."
The woman, with a disappointed look, rose up and quitted the room.
Mollie drew up the only chair and seated herself by the bedside.
"Did you come here alone?" was Miriam's first question, when they were
together.
"No," said Mollie, coloring slightly. "Mr. Ingelow came with me. He is
waiting below."
"That is well. It is growing late, and the neighborhood is not a good
one. He saved you, did he not?"
"He did. I owe him my life--my liberty."
"I knew he would--I knew he would! I trusted him from the first Mollie,
do you know why I sent for you in my dying hour?"
"To tell me who I am."
"Yes--you would like to know?"
"More than anything else in the wide world."
"And have you no idea--no suspicion?"
Mollie hesitated.
"I have sometimes thought," reddening painfully, "that I might be Mr.
Walraven's daughter."
"Ah!" said Miriam, her eyes lighting; "and he thinks so, too!"
"Miriam!"
"Yes," said Miriam, exultingly, "he thinks so--he believes so, and so
does his wife. But for all that, not one drop of his blood flows in your
veins!"
"Miriam!"
"Not one drop! If there did, you should not now be standing by my death
bed. I would expire unrepenting and unconfessed. Mollie, you are
mine--my very own--my daughter!"
She raised herself on her elbow and caught Mollie in her arms with a
sudden, fierce strength. The girl stood perfectly speechless with the
shock.
"My child--my child--my child! For years I have hungered and thirsted
for this hour. I have desired it as the blind desire sight. My child--my
child! have you no word for your dying mother?"
"Mother!"
The word broke from Mollie's white lips like a sobbing sigh. The intense
surprise of the unexpected revelation stunned her.
"You believe me, then--you do believe me!" Miriam cried, holding her
fast.
"You are dying," was Mollie's solemn answer. "Oh, my mother! why did you
not tell me this before?"
"Because I would not disgrace you and drag you down. I loved you far too
well for that. I could have done nothing for you but bespatter you with
the mire in which I wallowed, and I wanted you, my beautiful one--my
pearl, my lily--to be spotless as mountain snow. It can do you no harm
to know when I am dead."
"And Carl Walraven is nothing to me?"
"Nothing, Mollie--less than nothing. Not one drop of his black blood
flows in your veins. Are you sorry, Mollie?"
"No," said Mollie, drawing a long breath. "No!" she repeated, more
decidedly. "I am glad, Miriam--mother."
"You can call me mother, then, despite all?"
"Surely," Mollie said, gravely; "and now tell me all."
"Ah, it is a long, sad story--a wicked and miserable story of shame, and
sin, and suffering! It is a cruel thing to blight your young life with
the record of such horrible things."
"I may surely bear what others have to endure. But, Miriam, before you
begin, do you really mean to tell me Mr. Walraven thinks me his
daughter?"
"He believes it as surely as he believes in Heaven. He thinks you are
his child--Mary Dane's daughter."
"Who was Mary Dane?"
"Your father's sister by marriage--done to death by Carl Walraven."
Mollie turned very pale.
"Tell me all," she said. "Begin at the beginning. Here, drink this--it
is wine."
She had brought a pocket-flask with her. She filled a broken tea-cup and
held it to the dry, parched lips.
Miriam drained it eagerly.
"Ah!" she said, "that is new life! Sit down here by me, Mollie, where I
can see you; give me your hands. Now listen:
"Mollie, you are eighteen years old, though neither you nor Carl
Walraven thinks so. You are eighteen this very month. His child, whom
he thinks you are, would be almost seventeen, if alive. She died when
a babe of two years old.
"Eighteen years ago, Mollie, I was a happy wife and mother. Down in
Devonshire, in the little village of Steeple Hill, my husband and I
lived, where we had both been born, where we had courted and married,
where we hoped to lay our bones at last. Alas and alas! he fills a
bloody grave in the land of strangers, and I am drawing my last breath
in far America. And all, Mollie--all owing to Carl Walraven."
She paused a moment. The girl held the cup of wine to her lips. A few
swallows revived her, and enabled her to go on.
"There were two brothers, James and Stephen Dane. James, the elder by
six years, was my husband and your father. We lived in the old Dane
homestead--we three--a happy and prosperous household. We needed but
your coming, my daughter, to fill our cup of joy to the very brim. No
woman in all broad England was a happier wife and mother than Miriam
Dane when you were laid upon my breast.
"We named our baby-girl Miriam--your father would have it so--and you
grew healthful and beautiful, fair and blue-eyed, as it is in the nature
of the Danes to be. I was glad you had not my black eyes and gypsy skin.
I think I loved you all the more because you were your father's image.
"Ah, Mollie, I never can tell you what a blessed, peaceful household
we were until you were three months old! Then the first change took
place--Stephen Dane got married.
"At Wortley Manor, just without the confines of Steeple Hill, lived Sir
John Wortley and his lady. They had come to spend the hot months down in
the country, and my lady had brought with her a London lady's-maid, full
of London airs and graces, styles and fashions. She was a pretty girl,
this buxom Mary Linton, with flaxen curls, and light blue eyes, and a
skin white as milk and soft as satin. She could sing like an angel, and
dance like a fairy, and dress and talk like my lady herself.
"Of course, before she had been a month in the place, she had turned the
heads of all the young fellows in the village, Stephen Dane's among the
rest. But while she coquetted with all, she smiled most sweetly on
Stephen, with his three hundred pounds laid by in bank, his broad
shoulders, his lofty stature and his hearty looks. Three months after
she came to Wortley Manor, she was Stephen Dane's wife.
"That marriage was the beginning of all the trouble, Mollie. They left
the farm, this young pair, and set up a public-house. A public suited
Mary Dane to the life. She flaunted in gay dresses and bright ribbons,
and gossiped over the bar with the customers, and had all the news of
the place put at her tongue's end. And Stephen, he took to drink--a
little, at first, to be jovial with the customers; more and more
gradually, until, at the end of the honey-moon, he was half his time
on the fuddle. And Mary Dane didn't care. She laughed in her pretty
way when people talked.
"'Let him take his glass, Mariam,' says she to me. 'He's fonder of me in
his cups, and better-natured every way, than when he's sober. As long as
my man doesn't beat me and pull the house about our heads, I'll never
say him nay.'
"It was near the end of the second month that a sick traveler stopped
at the Wortley Arms--so they called the inn--and lay very ill there for
weeks and weeks. He had taken cold and got a fever, and he was very
poorly and like to die. Mary Dane, with all her airy ways, had a tender
heart and a soft head, and she turned to and nursed the sick man like a
sister. They took such care of him at the Wortley Arms that he got well,
and in three weeks was able to be up and about.
"This strange gentleman gave the name of Mr. Walls; and he was young and
handsome, and very rich. He spent money like water; he paid the doctor
and the landlord and the nurses as if he had been a prince. He had a
pleasant word and jest for every one. He was hand and glove with Stephen
Dane, and heaped presents on presents on his wife. He gave her silk
dresses and gold rings and costly shawls and gay bonnets until people
began to talk. What did he care for their talk? what did Mary Dane,
either? He lingered and lingered. The talking grew louder, until, at
last, it reached the ears of Stephen Dane. He took it quietly. 'It's
mighty dull for the likes of you here, Mr. Walls,' he says to the
gentleman, looking him full in the eye. 'It's no place for a young
gentleman, in my notion. I think you had better be going.'
"'Do you?' says Mr. Walls, back again, as cool as himself. 'You are
right, I dare say. I'll settle my bill to-night and be off to-morrow.'
"He did settle his bill at the bar before they parted, took a last glass
with Stephen Dane, and walked up to his room, whistling. Steeple Hill
never saw him more. When morning came he was far away, and Mary Dane
with him."
Again Miriam paused; again Mollie held the wine-cup to her lips; again
she drank and went on:
"I couldn't tell you, Mollie, if I would, the shock and the scandal that
ran through Steeple Hill, and I wouldn't if I could. If it were in my
power, such horrors would never reach your innocent ears. But they were
gone, and Stephen Dane was like a man mad. He drank, and drank, and
drank until he was blind drunk, and then, in spite of everybody, set off
to go after them. Before he had got ten yards from his own doorstep he
fell down in a fit, blood pouring from his month and nostrils. That
night he died.
"The hour of his death, when he knew he had but a few moments to live,
he turned every soul out of the room, and made his brother kneel down
and take a solemn oath of vengeance.
"'I'll never rest easy in my grave, James,' said the dying man, 'and
I'll never let you rest easy in your life, until you have avenged me
on my wronger.'
"Your father knelt down and swore. It was a bad, bad death-bed, and a
bad, bad oath. But he took it; and Stephen Dane died, with his brother's
hand clasped in his, and his dying eyes fixed on his brother's face.
"They buried the dead man; and when the sods were piled above him, your
father told me of the vow he had made--the vow he meant to keep. What
could I say? what could I do? I wept woman's tears, I said woman's words.
I pleaded, I reasoned, I entreated--all in vain. He would go, and he
went.
"He followed the guilty pair, like a blood-hound, for weary months and
months. For a long time it seemed as though he must give up the search
as fruitless; but at last, in the open street of a French city, he met
the man Walls face to face. He flew at him like a madman, grasped his
throat, and held him until the man turned black in the face. But he was
lithe, and young, and powerful, and he shook him off at last. Then
commenced a struggle for life or death. The street was a lonely one; the
time past midnight. No one was abroad; not a creature was to be seen.
Walls pulled out a pistol and shot James Dane through the head. With a
cry of agony, the murdered man fell forward on his face. Another instant,
and Walls had fled. The dead man was alone in the deserted street.
"Next day the papers were full of the mysterious murder, but before next
day Walls and Mary Dane were far away. Rewards were offered by the
government, the police were set on the track, but all in vain--the
murderer was not to be found.
"But there was one who knew it, and to whom the knowledge was a
death-blow--guilty Mary Dane. At all times she had been more weak than
wicked, and when Walls had fled home, blood-stained and ghastly, and in
his first frenzy had told her all, she dropped down at his feet like a
dead woman.
"Mary Dane fled with him from the scene of his crime, because his baby
daughter lay on her arm, and she would not see its guilty father die a
felon's death; but her heart was torn with remorse from that hour. She
never held up her head again. Her wicked love turned to hatred and
loathing; the very first opportunity she left him, and, like a
distracted creature, made her way home.
"Walls made no effort to follow her--he thought she had gone off in a
fit of remorse and misery and drowned herself. He was glad to be rid of
her, and he left France at once, and wandered away over the world.
"Mary Dane came home with her child--home to die. On her death-bed she
told me the story of my husband's death, and from the hour I heard it,
Reason tottered on her throne. I have never been sane since my misery
drove me mad.
"Mary Dane died, and I buried her. The child went to the work-house--I
would not have touched it with a pair of tongs--and there it, too, died
of lack and care. And so the miserable story of sin and shame ended, as
all such stories must end.
"But the misery did not end here. You were left me, but I seemed to care
for you no longer. I sat down, a stunned and senseless thing, and let
all belonging to me go to rack and ruin. The farm went, the furniture
went, the homestead went--I was left a widowed, penniless, half-crazed
wretch. Thus all was gone but the clothes upon our backs--you went, too.
We were starving, but for the pitying charity of others. As you sat
singing by the road-side, the manager of a strolling band of players
overheard you, took a fancy to your pretty looks, and ways, and voice,
and made me an offer for you. I don't think I knew what I was doing half
the time--I didn't then--I let you go.
"When you were gone I broke down altogether, and the authorities of the
village took and shut me up in a lunatic asylum. The years I spent
there--and I spent six long years--are but a dull, dead blank. My life
began again when they sent me forth, as they said--cured.
"I left Steeple Hill and began my life as a tramp. I joined a band of
gypsies, and took to their ways--fortune-telling, rush-weaving--anything
that came up; and I was black enough and weather-beaten enough to pass
for one of them. I had but one desire left in life. To hunt up the
manager of the little theater, and see my daughter again. I didn't want
you back. What could I, a miserable tramp, homeless, houseless, do with
a young girl?--but I hungered and thirsted for the sound of your voice,
for the sight of your face. I would know you anywhere--you were of the
kind that do not change much. I knew I would recognize you as soon as I
saw you.
"For two years I strolled about with the gypsy gang, searching in vain.
Then my time came, and I saw you. It was at Liverpool, embarking on
board a vessel for America. I had money--made in those two yeas
wandering--hidden in my breast, more than enough for my passage. I
crossed the Atlantic in the same vessel with you, and never lost sight
of you since.
"But a great, a mighty shock was waiting for me this side the ocean. On
the pier, as we landed, Mollie, the first person my eyes rested on was
the man Walls--older, darker, sterner than when I saw him before, but my
arch-enemy--the murderer Walls.
"Mollie, I let you go and I followed that man home, followed him to a
mansion that was like a palace, and I heard his name--his real name.
Mollie, Mollie, do you need to be told what that name is?"
"No," said Mollie, in a horror-struck voice; "it is Carl Walraven!"
"It is. Now do you know why I hate him--why I would die the death of a
dog by the way-side before I would take a crust from him?"
"And yet," Mollie cried in a voice of bitter anguish, "you have let me,
James Dane's child, eat of his bread, drink of his cup, dwell under his
roof! Oh, my mother!"
At that piercing cry of unutterable reproach, the dying woman held up
her supplicating hands.
"It was because I loved you a thousand times better than myself--better
than my revenge. Forgive me, Mollie--forgive me!"
"You are my mother, and you are dying," Mollie said, solemnly, bending
down and kissing her. "I forgive you everything. But I will never set
foot under Carl Walraven's roof again."