No, it was not love I felt, but deep gratitude that an example of self-sacrifice and devotion should have crushed forever out of me the impious doubt of the existence of a beneficent Creator. It was to this I owed my salvation, and as I paced the foggy street I thought of the daughter toiling for her sick mother. I saw her patient face of suffering, heard her wistful voice saying: "I will pay you to-morrow; I have some work to take back." Ah, what a story is here revealed! I dwelt upon the modesty which caused her to shrink from the compassionate advances of a stranger, and with tears in my eyes dwelt also upon the child-like confidence she had reposed in me. She became to me an incarnation of purity. There were good women in the world—thank God for that. Through her spirit my faith in human goodness was restored, and I saw my life in a clearer light, unstained and unclouded by vice and degradation. Peace, if not happiness, might yet be mine.
To one course I pledged myself, and vowed that nothing should turn me from it. I would never live with my wife again; her revolting duplicities, her shameful debasement, should no longer torture me. I would be done with her, so far as personal association went, and with those other relatives who had systematically persecuted me and maligned me. The infamous law—wickedly and falsely called the law of God—which bound me to a living curse, to a moral pest, could not compel me to inhabit the house in which she indulged in her depravities. Of so much of my fortune as was left she should have a share, and should receive it through an agent. One visit only would I pay to what was in mockery called my home, and that for the purpose of removing my private papers. Then would I shake the dust of that earthly hell from my feet, and turn my back upon it forever.
To this end I must efface myself, and must be known henceforth by another name than Fordham. That was easy, and I was stung by no reproach as to justification. If ever a man was justified in practising such a deceit it was I.
My musings were interrupted by the unclosing of the street door. The doctor was there, and Miss Cameron; he was bidding her take some repose.
"We must not have you break down," he said. "Ah, here is our friend. The fog has not swallowed him up."
"How can I thank you?" she said to me, holding out her hand. It trembled as it lay for a moment in mine, and her eyes shone with tears.
"By following the doctor's advice," I replied, "and by allowing me to call when I have had some rest myself. Your mother is no worse, I hope?"
The doctor—one of those sensible practitioners who help their patients to get well by bright words—answered for her.
"No, not worse, not at all, not at all. With heaven's help we'll set her up again. There, there, my dear, don't cry; and what are you about, stopping here in the cold? Go and lie down. I will send the medicine at nine o'clock."
As we walked away together he said: "It would be cruel to tell her the truth."