BRAMWELL FINDS A SISTER.
The sound of the voices had awakened the child, and he sat up in the
bed, looking with wide-open eyes from father to mother, from mother to
father.
Bramwell stood with his back against the wall, staring at his wife and
breathing hard. He was stunned, overwhelmed. He felt uncertain of his
own identity, of the place around him, and of the child. The only
thing of which he felt sure was that he stood face to face with his
wife, who had risen from the tomb.
"I did not come," she said, moving out from her position between the
bed and the wall, "to see you or to ask mercy or forgiveness of you.
You need not reproach me for being alive; because only I fainted, you
should not have seen me to-night; you should never have seen me again,
for I was on my way to my grave, where I could not go without looking
on my child once more. The announcement of my death came only a little
while before its time. I shall not see another day."
Her voice was dull and hoarse, the features wasted and pinched, and
mottled with marring blotches of scorbutic red.
"This is no place for us to talk," he said, pointing to the child on
the bed. "Follow me."
She hesitated.
"I do not want to talk with you; I wish to spare you. I know you would
be justified in killing me. But I would not have you suffer because
you wish me dead. I shall not trouble you or the world with another
day of my wretched life. Cover your face, and let me kiss the boy
again, and I will go. I know my way to the river, and I would spare
you any harm that might come to you of my dying here--at your hands."
"This is no place, I say, for such a scene or for such words. Follow
me."
"You will not kill me?"
"I will not harm you, poor soul."
"Your pity harms me worse than blows."
"Then I will not pity you. Come."
"May I kiss the child once more before I leave the room? You may cover
your eyes, so that you may not see your child polluted by my touch."
"You will be free to kiss him when we have done our talk. I shall not
hinder you."
He held the door open for her, and with tottering steps and bent head,
she went out into the dark and waited for him.
"Lie down now, my child, and try to go to sleep. Mother will come to
you later."
The child, overawed, covered himself up and closed his eyes.
Bramwell took the lamp off the window-sill, and led the way into the
sitting-room.
He shut the door behind them, put the lamp on the table, and, setting
a chair for her by it, bade her sit down. She complied in silence,
resting her elbow on the table, and covering her face with her hand.
"You said you fainted," he said, "do you feel weak still?"
"A little."
"I keep some brandy in case of sudden illness, for this is a lonely
place." It was a relief to him to utter commonplaces. "And there are,
or at least were until lately, no neighbours of whom I could borrow."
He poured some out of a pocket-flask, and added water, and handed the
glass to her. "Drink that."
"What! you will give me aid under your roof?"
"Under the roof of Heaven. Drink."
She raised the glass to her lips, and swallowed a small quantity.
"All. Drink it all. You have need of it."
She did as she was told.
He began walking up and down the room softly.
"You sent me the boy when you believed you were dying, and when the
crisis turned in favour of life you inserted the announcement of your
death in order that I might believe myself free of you for ever?"
"Yes. I intended you should never see me or hear of me again."
"That I might be free to marry again if I chose?"
"That was my idea."
"And then you came to bid good-bye to your child before going to the
river?"
"Yes; they never would have found out who I was. I left all papers
behind me, and cut the marks off my clothes."
"But the love of your child was so strong, you risked everything to
bid him a last farewell?"
"I am his mother, and all that is left to me of a heart is in my
child. I do not ask you to forgive me for the past. I do not ask your
pardon for what I did three years ago; but I do entreat you, as you
are a just and merciful man, to forgive me for coming to see my
innocent little child!"
"She took her hand from before her face, and, clasping both her hands
together, raised them in passionate supplication to him as he passed
her in his walk. Her thick, dull voice was full of unutterable woe.
"I forgive you the past and the present utterly. Say no more in that
strain. My head is very heavy, and I am trying to think. Do not excite
yourself about forgiveness. I am endeavouring to see my way. This has
come suddenly and unexpectedly, and my brain seems feeble, and it will
not work freely. In a little while all will be plain to me. In the
meantime keep quiet."
He spoke very gently.
She groaned and covered her face again. She would have preferred the
river to this, but the manner of the man compelled obedience as she
had never felt obedience compelled before, and it was obvious he did
not wish her to go to the river--yet, at all events.
"It was a terrible risk to run--a terrible risk. Suppose I had
married?"
"But I never would have interfered with you, or come near you, or let
you know I was alive. You were the last being on earth I wanted to
see." She took her hand down from before her face and looked at him
earnestly.
"I am sure of that, but you see what has fallen out to-night."
"O, forgive me, and let me go! My lot is bitter enough for what has
happened, without reproaches for something that has not occurred. You
have not married again? Have you?"
He shook his head, and said with a mournful smile, "No. I have not
married again. Well, let that pass. Let that pass. Mentioning it helps
me to clear up matters--enables me to see my way."
"May I go now?"
"Not yet. Stay awhile."
"I would rather be in the river than here."
"So would I; but I must not go, for many reasons. There is the child,
for example, to go no Higher."
"But I can be of no use to the child. Your coldness is killing me. Why
don't you rage at me or let me go? Are you a man of stone? or do you
take me for a woman of stone?" she cried passionately, writhing on her
chair.
He waved her outburst aside with a gentle gesture. "Nothing can be
gained by heat or haste."
"Let me say good-bye to my child and go," she cried vehemently.
"The child and the river can bide awhile; bide you also awhile. It is
a long time since we last met."
She grasped her throat with her hand. She was on the point of breaking
down. His last words pierced her to the soul. With a superhuman effort
she controlled herself and sat silent.
For a minute there was silence. He continued his walk up and down.
Gradually his footfalls, which had been light all along, grew fainter
and fainter until they became almost inaudible. Gradually his face,
which had been perplexed, lost its troubled look and softened into a
peaceful smile. It seemed as though he had ceased to be aware of her
presence. He looked like a solitary man communing with himself and
drawing solace from his thoughts. He looked as though he beheld some
beatific vision that yielded heavenly content--as though a voice of
calming and elevating melody were reaching him from afar off. When he
spoke his tones were fine and infinitely tender, and sounded like a
benediction. He saw his way clearly now.
"You risked everything to-night to get a glimpse of your child, a
final look, to say a last farewell. You were willing to risk
everything here; you were willing to risk hereafter everything that
may be the fate of those who lay violent hands upon their own lives.
Why need you risk anything at all, either for the boy's sake or in the
hereafter, because of laying violent hands upon your life?"
"I do not understand you," she whispered, looking at him in awe. His
appearance, his manner, his voice, did not seem of earth.
"Why not stay with your boy and fill your heart with him?"
"What?" she whispered, growing faint and catching the table for
support.
"Why not stay with your boy and fill your heart with ministering to
him?"
"What? Here? In this place?" she cried in a wavering voice, still no
louder than a whisper.
"In this place. Why should you not stay with your child? There is no
one so fit to tend and guard a little child as a mother."
"And you?" she asked in a wild intense whisper. "Will you go to the
river to hide the head I have dishonoured?"
"No. I too will stay and help you to shield and succour the child.
Mother and father are the proper guardians of little ones."
"Frank Mellor, are you mad?" she cried out loud, springing to her feet
and dashing her hand across her face to clear her vision.
"No; there isn't substance enough in me now to make a madman."
"And," she cried, starting up and facing him, "Frank Mellor, do you
know who I am? Do you know that three years ago I left your house
under infamous circumstances, and that I brought shame and sorrow and
destruction upon your home and you? Do you know that I have made you a
byeword in Beechley and London, and wherever you have been heard of?
Do you know that I am your _wife?_"
She had raised her hoarse voice to its highest pitch. Her eyes
flashed. She brandished her arms. Her face blazed red in the
undisfigured parts, and the red spots turned purple and livid. She was
frantically defending the magnanimity of this man against the baseness
of her former self, against the evil of her present reputation,
against contact with the leprosy of her sin.
"All that needs to be known, I know," he said, in the same calm,
gentle voice. "Years ago I lost my wife. I lost sight of her for a
long time. To-night I find a sister."
"Sister!" she cried in a whisper, sinking on a chair, and losing at
once all her fierce aspect and enhanced colour.
"To-night I find a sister who is in despair because of the loss of her
child. I restore her child to her empty arms, and I say, 'My roof is
your roof, and my bread is your bread.'" He lit a candle, and handed
it to her. "Go to your room where the boy is, and take him in your
arms, for it comforts a mother to have her child in her arms. I shall
stay here. It is dawn already, and I have work to do. Good-night."