"It happens that I am in need of a sum of money. An opportunity is open to my son which will be to his advantage, but I am not rich enough to purchase it."
"How much is needed?" I asked.
She named a sum which was modest in comparison with the limit which Gabriel Carew had given me, and I at once consented to pay it to her for her information. I had money with me, and I counted out the amount she required, and handed it to her. After ascertaining that it was correct, she commenced.
"When I accepted the situation Mr. Carew offered me, I did it with my eyes open. I was at that time employed in a lunatic asylum, and was dissatisfied with my rate of pay. Mr. Carew offered me higher terms. His wife was a dangerous woman, and needed constant watching. Properly speaking, she should have been placed in an asylum, but the thought of so doing was hateful to her husband, who desired to keep his domestic affliction from public knowledge. He would have regarded such a disclosure as an indelible disgrace. There are similar secrets in many families. At the time he married her, he had no suspicion that her blood was tainted, and it was only three months before the birth of Gabriel Carew that he made the discovery. I do not profess to be thoroughly familiar with all the particulars; I am not a prying woman, and was contented with what he told me. When he made the dreadful discovery he and his wife were abroad, and the occasion of it, so far as I could gather, ran in this fashion. Mr. Carew was occupying a house in Switzerland--he was rich at the time--and was entertaining guests. Among them was a false friend who was managing his affairs in England, where Mr. Carew lived for the greater part of every year. Ultimately this friend robbed him of his fortune, which Mr. Carew never recovered, coming, however, into another later on, which enabled him to purchase the estate of Rosemullion. One evening there was a large party in Mr. Carew's house, in which his friend was stopping. Mrs. Carew was passionately fond of music, and there was a Tyrolean air for which she had an infatuation. She sang and played it again and again, and became much excited. It is not out of place to say that she was a very beautiful woman. The evening passed on, and the guests had departed. All but one--her husband's false friend, who was stopping in the house. Either his duties as a polite host or some other business called her husband away, and Mrs. Carew and this friend were left alone. He asked her to play and sing again, and she did so for him; and then he made love to her. She repulsed him indignantly, but he was not to be easily daunted, and a climax arrived when he grossly insulted her. This roused her to fury, and she caught an ornamental dagger---but a weapon capable of mischief--from the table, and would have plunged it into his heart had he not caught her wrist and disarmed her. He flung the dagger away, and then coolly told her that her husband had implicit confidence in him, and that he would invent a story that would ruin her. He told her, too, that he had her husband in his power, that she and he were at his mercy, and that he could beggar them at any moment. There occurred then a singular change in her; her excitement left her, and she became as cool as he. Deceived by this, he renewed his suit, but she held him back, and she said one word to him: 'Wait!' To wait meant to hope, and he said he would be content if she would play and sing to him again. She did so--the same Tyrolean air she had sang so many times on this evening. Her husband came in, and the scene ended. In describing it I am drawing from what Mr. Carew told me afterwards in England. But the incident was not to end there. Mr. Carew and his wife retired, and he, awakening in the middle of the night, missed her from his side. He started up, and saw that her clothes were gone. At the moment of the discovery he heard a cry, and he ran from the room. He saw his wife approaching him; she was fully dressed, and she held in her hand the ornamental dagger, which was stained with blood. There was a smile on her lips, but although he stood straight in front of her, with a candle in his hand, she did not appear to see him. She passed by without a word or look of recognition. He followed her to their bedroom, and there she laid the dagger aside, undressed, and went to bed. She had been all the time fast asleep. When she was abed he looked at the blood-stains on the dagger; there was no wound upon her; from whom came the blood? From whence the cry? The direction from which his wife had come was that of the room occupied by his friend. He went there, and found his guest just reviving from a state of insensibility caused by a stab in his breast while he was asleep. Mr. Carew could form but one conclusion, and his sole aim now was that the matter should be kept quiet. In this he succeeded, having invented a story which his friend professed to believe, and into which Mrs. Carew's name was not introduced. It suited Mr. Carew's friend not to dispute the invented story; his wound was not very serious, and he subsequently repaid the injury by beggaring the man who had reposed entire confidence in him, and whose wife he had attempted to lead to her ruin. Mr. Carew could not immediately question his wife, for the next morning she was dangerously ill. The ordinary doctors who were called in did not appear to understand the case, and eventually Mr. Carew consulted a foreign specialist of renown, who informed him that there was insanity in his wife's blood, and that it would most likely assume a phase in which there would be danger to those about her. This alarmed Mr. Carew, not for his own sake, but for his wife's. There was a law in that part of the country, which, put in force, would have removed Mrs. Carew from his care, and he made haste for England, where he would feel safe. Thus far in his wife's illness no dangerous symptoms were visible, and he flattered himself into the belief that the foreign doctor was wrong in the opinion he had given. The most marked characteristic of the disease manifested itself in a harmless fashion, being simply a sentimental passion for the Tyrolean air Mrs. Carew had sung so many times on the night when the hidden seed of insanity began to grow. Under these conditions Gabriel Carew was born. She insisted upon nursing the child, which, had I been in their service at the time, I should not have allowed. When Gabriel was two years of age, the dangerous symptoms of which the foreign doctor had warned Mr. Carew began to manifest themselves, and I was engaged as nurse. Mr. Carew had lost his fortune then, but he was not entirely without means, the largest portion of which was spent upon his wife. He paid me liberally, his one desire in life being to keep the skeleton of his home concealed, not only from the world, but from the knowledge of his son. He thought that, growing up in ignorance of his mother's condition, Gabriel might escape the contagion. I thought differently, but we had no discussions on the subject. He had engaged me to perform a certain duty, and I performed it--there it ended. I had nothing to do with consequences. After Mr. Carew took possession of Rosemullion his wife became worse; there were weeks together when no person but I could approach her with safety. I had perfect control over her. She was obedient, through fear, to my lightest word. It was certainly merciful that the sad secret, having been so long concealed from Gabriel, should remain so. If mischief were done, it was not now to be averted. This is the explanation of Gabriel Carew's lonely boyhood life, and it will possibly help to explain any strange peculiarities you may have observed in him. I do not consider I have violated the second promise I gave to his father--that I would not divulge without powerful cause the secret of Gabriel Carew's unhappy inheritance. There seems to me here to be cause sufficient for secrecy not to be any longer observed. My tongue being now unsealed, I am ready to reply to any questions you may ask."
[XVI.]
Mrs. Fortress's statement made everything clear to me, and also marked out for me a clear path of duty. Knowing what I now knew, it would have been an act of monstrous wickedness to allow Reginald to marry Mildred. Never could I hope to be forgiven did I not prevent the union. Better that my son should live a life of unhappiness through all his days than enter into a contract which would doom the unborn to madness--perhaps to crime. It was not only an offence against man, it was an offence against God. The task before me was difficult, I knew; but I must face it bravely and without flinching. Hearts would be broken in the struggle--well, better that than the awful consequences which would follow such a marriage. My own heart bled as I contemplated what must occur during the next few weeks.
Thus did I excitedly reason with myself in the first heat of the revelation. When I became cooler I saw more clearly the difficulties in my way. What evidence had I to produce? That of an old woman who had given me certain information--which tallied with my own suspicions--for a large sum of money. A cunning woman, to supply me with what she saw I wished. Cunning from the first. Paid liberally--nay, extravagantly--always, according to her own confession. Her one single motive in the matter from first to last--money. Was it likely, being in service so temptingly remunerative, that she should not adopt every cunning means to retain it? There was not only the immediate pay, but the prospect of a reward which would make her comfortable for life. She had so manœuvred that she gained this reward. During the lifetime of Gabriel Carew's mother Mrs. Fortress held supreme power over her. Her son was only allowed to see her a few minutes at a time at intervals of weeks. Even her husband, at the bidding of this clever woman, was denied admittance to his wife's chamber. What difficulty was there, in those days and weeks of seclusion, to so oppress, irritate, and torture the poor patient as to compel her to put on the semblance of madness--to drive her into it indeed? Such cases were not unknown. Even now, from time to time, the public heart is stirred by a sudden revelation of such atrocities.
These were cogent arguments which I raised against myself. With myself in my son's place I should confidently advance them, and should laugh to scorn the weak opposition which would bar my way to happiness. I sighed as I thought. The obstacles in my way were every moment growing more formidable.
These were not the only arguments against myself which occurred to me. There was Mrs. Fortress's conduct when she left Rosemullion after the death of her mistress. Gabriel Carew had made a pitiful appeal to her. How had she met him? By assuming a mysterious air, indicating that she had the key to a secret in which he was vitally interested, but that she did not intend to give it to him. Why had she done this? Who could doubt the answer to such a question? It was necessary to the rôle she had adopted. Any other course would have led to an exposure of her vile scheme. There was the legacy which Mr. Carew left her in his will. Were the real truth known she might be deprived of it. Therefore, the assumption of mystery in her last interview with Gabriel Carew. A cunning woman indeed.
Against evidence so flimsy there was a heavy weight of testimony. Was not Gabriel Carew a loving husband and father? No person could dispute it. He loved his wife and child, and they loved him. Was he ever known to commit a cruel act! Never. Was not his purse ever open to the call of charity? Innumerable instances that such was so could be adduced. Could even light acts of rudeness and incivility be laid at his door? What was the worst that could be said of him? That he was not fond of society, that he was a recluse. Could not this be said of hundreds of estimable men, and was it ever put forth as a distinct offence? If he did not himself go into society, did he prevent his wife and child from doing so? On the contrary. He encouraged them to seek amusement which he, a grave man and a student, possibly deemed frivolous. Fond of books, seeking his greatest pleasures in them, was not this distinctly in his favour, and did it not prove him to be of a superior nature to the common herd? The heaviest charge was that which, in conversation with me, he had brought against himself--that on the approach of night his spirits became gloomy. Slight grounds indeed for so serious an accusation as insanity. Madmen were proverbially cunning. Gabriel Carew was the soul of frankness, himself opening up discussions which would tell against him were he not mentally and physically sound and healthy. I began to despair.