I used what persuasion and arguments I could, and assured her I would communicate immediately with Miss Hurd and Hetty, and tell them how matters stood here, though I hated to distress the poor child with such reports being circulated about her. She agreed it was a great shame, and, too, just as she was so happy and feeling so like her old self. As soon as she had gone, in the same room where she had been sitting, Miss Hurd sat and, heading the letter from Providence, wrote to the girl’s mother, begging her to let Hetty stay another month at least, pleading her need, and her physician’s opinion that a change of companions just then would be very prejudicial to her—a letter which the family could show to doubting friends, thus allaying suspicion. This letter, inclosed in one to Hetty, was sent back with the Providence post-mark, and the family quieted down.
This was near a month before the baby came—an anxious month for me, what must it have been for Hetty! The baby died in two weeks. I felt relieved; it simplified things; but Hetty’s grief was real and deep: “Oh, Doctor, my baby is dead!” she wrote. She was not a “Hetty Sorrel,” after all, as I had sometimes thought her, but a sorrowing mother, her shame and fear of detection—everything—forgotten in her anguish over the death of her illegitimate baby!
The night she came home, meeting her train, I went with her to her door. I longed to go in and help her face her family; but that could not be. She had brought back to me all the letters I had written her, with a lock of her baby’s hair—a tiny silken curl which the doctor had cut from the dead baby’s head. The pathos of it! the little curl was folded in a powder paper, and put in a tiny box marked “mourning-pins.”
“I don’t dare to take it home with me, but you will keep it for me,” she said.
We had been preparing her family for her altered appearance: she was supposed to be worn out from caring for the invalid, and, the last two weeks, to have had a severe attack of dysentery. By her manner of dress she was to arrange that her figure should appear much as when she went away; but, oh, her face!—they must have been blind, indeed, if they could not see that it was not, and never would be again, the round girlish face they had known. It was the face of a saddened woman. Her grief for her baby was pitiful, and she was denied even the comfort of that little lock of hair!
Months later she told me her people never learned the truth, but I sometimes felt that they must have surmised more than they let her know; and yet, perhaps not. By a ruse I got from her subsequently the name of her child’s father, making her think I knew it when only suspecting it—a strange thing this—the woman’s loyalty in shielding the man! My little “Hetty Sorrel” began to show the more heroic traits of “Hester Prynne.” I kept in touch with her for several years.
When Dr. Wyeth learned of all this, she was frightened at the risks I had taken, and begged me never to undertake a case like that again, unless some other member of the family be taken into confidence. But the poor girl had said that it would kill her mother; that her father would kill her lover; and that, if they knew the truth, she might as well kill herself; so I had yielded to her entreaties for secrecy. Had she died in confinement, I knew my letters to her, and hers to me, would vindicate me, proving that there had been no crime—merely the attempt to help her to keep her secret.
Only a short time after this another girl came to me in the same trouble. Here the circumstances were different: She had no relatives in this country; she was English, twenty-three years old; her lover was Irish, and a Roman Catholic. She frankly told me his name and where he worked, and said he drank some, but she was willing to marry him if he would have her, but she doubted if he would marry her. I told her to send him to me. When he paid no attention to this request, I wrote, asking him to call. This also he ignored; then I called at his boarding-place and left a note saying I should be under the necessity of calling upon him at his place of business, unless he came at once to see me. This brought him to the office. He was a factory hand. He had a dogged air. While sounding him, to see if he would marry the girl, I had spoken of seeing the priest, which evidently impressed him, for he said, “You can make me marry her, but I won’t live with her.” Then I took another tack: Of course I could make him marry her, but I wouldn’t do that if he was not man enough to marry her willingly—such marriages could only bring misery; and anyhow, I understood he was a drinking man, and Molly was too good a girl to be tied to a man with such habits. He sneered when I spoke of her as being a good girl; that roused my wrath. I told him he was a coward to get a girl in trouble and refuse to stand by her, then sneer at her in the bargain; that the least he could do was to help her financially, so she could go away and have her child where her acquaintances would be none the wiser, and she could take up her old life again, untrammelled by the stain and disgrace. I made him see that she had got to face all the pain and danger and disgrace, and that he certainly ought to make it easier for her by paying her board in a Home, and the expenses of her confinement.
He rose to the occasion, and went out of the office with more self-respect, and commanding more respect from me, than when he had come in; and in a few days, when he sent me money for several months’ board, I arranged for Molly’s admittance to the Providence Home. It was a much easier affair to manage than the other. But as Molly’s money began to give out, Mike’s manliness oozed out, too. As he ignored her appeals, I wrote for him to call on me again. The days went by and he made no sign. Meantime, a letter from the doctor told me that Molly’s son was born, was already adopted, and that Molly had a place as a wet nurse for a premature baby which was being raised in an incubator. Molly’s bills were still unsettled; if Mike was to help any more I must compass it then; she would need all she could earn for future necessities.
Calling at his boarding-place, I found he had just gone back to work. Hurrying toward the factory, I saw him ahead of me, sauntering along, all unconscious of who or what was overtaking him. Coming up behind him, I spoke his name. Turning, surprised and sheepish, he faltered, “I was going to come to the office to-night.” Looking in his eyes I announced, “Mr. Dagon, your son was born day before yesterday.” Conflicting emotions showed in his wretched face—astonishment, pride, joy, were quickly followed by shame and humiliation, as he realized he had no right to be proud of being a father. The words “your son” had roused the man and the father in him, but the painful feelings had quickly supervened. My anger melted as I saw his pitiable state; but, knowing him for a shifty fellow, I realized I must get him to commit himself in regard to the money. He promised to bring it that evening; then asked in a shamefaced way more about Molly and the boy. I told him of the baby being adopted by a childless couple almost before it was born.