Love's Golden Thread

by E. C. Kenyon

To get away from that terrible voice, and the sound of those cruel words, was Doris's first determination; her second was to go where she could hide for ever and ever from Bernard Cameron, lest in his noble, disinterested love for her he should venture, in spite of what had occurred, to insist upon marrying her. The idea of bringing him a dowry of disgrace was so frightful that it over-balanced for the moment the poor, distraught mind of the suffering girl.

Mrs. Cameron was one of those women who, when wronged, are blind and deaf to all else; suffering acutely, they pour out torrents of words, unseeing, unheeding the mischief they may be doing to others. She, therefore, continued talking, in a loud, harsh voice, with unsparing bitterness, all the time Doris was dressing and putting on her plainest outdoor apparel; and the mother's mind having turned to the subject of marriage, and her wish being to destroy any thoughts Doris might have cherished of Bernard as a possible husband, she said:

"My son, though poor as a pauper now--thanks to your father--bears an unblemished name. Honourable as the day, he comes of a most honourable race of men. In time, when he has worked up some sort of position for himself, he may marry a girl with money, and thus, in a way, attain to something like the position he has lost. It is all a chance, of course, but it is the only chance he has. There are lots of girls with money. He is handsome and taking; he must marry one of them. Do you hear me, Doris? I say he must! It is the only chance he has. Are you not glad for him to have just that one little chance?"

Doris was silent.

"Ha! You do not answer? Can it be, can it possibly be," Mrs. Cameron's voice grew hysterical, in her fear and anxiety, "that from any foolish words the poor, ruined lad has said--such words as lads will say to giddy girls--you can possibly consider him at all, in any way, bound to you?"

The poor girl would not answer. She looked appealingly around. Was there no one who could save her from this woman? Where was Bernard? Why was he not at her side, to shield and protect her? The next moment she realised the impossibility of his being there in her bedroom; and again her eyes roved longingly round the limited space.

On the morrow no doubt pitying friends, hearing of her trouble, would rally round her: the clergyman's wife, the doctor's, the ladies to whose school she used to go, and others, acquaintances more or less intimate. There was not one of them who would not be kinder to her than this woman, who was goading her now beyond endurance. But they were absent--and Mrs. Cameron was so very, very present.

"Do you mean to say--do you mean to say--there is anything between you, the daughter of a criminal, who shall yet be brought to justice, if there be any power in the arm of the law, and my son--my stainless, innocent child? Will you answer me?"

The room, which was going round and round, in a cloud of darkness crossed by sparks of light, seemed to Doris to assume once more its ordinary appearance, as she came round out of a half-swoon. What to answer, however, she knew not. She could only dimly comprehend the question. Was there anything between her, overwhelmed as she was with disgrace, and Bernard, poor, defrauded, yet honourable in the eyes of all men? Was there anything between them? Yes. There was something between them--there was love. But could she speak of that to a third person, and that third person one so aggressive as Mrs. Cameron? She felt she could not: therefore again she was silent, while the woman poured out on her the wrath which now completely over-mastered her.

"You bad girl!" she cried. "Not content with your father's having ruined my boy by stealing all his money, you are mean enough and wicked enough to deliberately determine to cut away his one remaining chance of rising in the world! 'Pon my word"--all the vulgarity of the woman was coming to the surface--"you would ruin him body and soul, if you could! All for your own ambition, that you, too, may rise in the world; you intend to cling to him as a limpet clings to a rock--and he won't be able to raise you, not he, poor lad! but you will drag him down into the mire, which will close over his head and then--then perhaps you will be content."