“And here was a beautiful and innocent girl who loved me well enough to accept me as her husband although I was twenty years her senior, loved me with that youthful upward-looking love which is of all sentiments the most attractive to a man who has lived a hard work-a-day life in a hard work-a-day world. To spend an hour with Maria was to feel a Sabbath peacefulness which solaced and refreshed my soul. I felt ten years younger when I was with her than I felt in my own—home.”
He stopped, with a heart-broken sigh.
“Oh, Theodore, beware of such burdens as that which I laid upon my shoulders; beware of such a chain as I wound about my steps. What a dastard a man feels himself when his love begins to cool for the woman who cast her life upon one chance—who leans upon him as the beginning and end of her existence. I have walked up and down the quiet pathway before Myrtle Cottage for an hour at a stretch, dreading to go in, lest she should read my treason in my face. The break came at last—suddenly. I paltered with my fate for a long time. I carried on a kind of Platonic flirtation with Maria Morales, taking monstrous pains to let her know that I never meant to go beyond Platonics—reminding her of the difference of our ages, and of my almost paternal regard—the vain subterfuge of a self-deluded man. One moment of impulse swept away all barriers, and I left Onslow Square Maria’s engaged husband. Her father’s generosity precipitated matters. Squire Strangway had been dead nearly a year, and the estate was in the hands of the mortgagee, who had been trying to sell it for some time. My future father-in-law was eager for the purchase directly I suggested it to him, and my wife’s dowry afforded me the means of realizing Evelyn’s long-cherished dream.”
“Cruel for her, poor creature.”
“Cruel—brutal—diabolical! I felt the blackness of my treason, and yet it had been brought about by circumstances rather than by any deliberate act of mine. I had to go to the woman who still loved me, and still trusted me, and tell her what I was going to do. I had to do this, and I did it—by word of mouth—face to face—not resorting to the coward’s expedient of pen and ink. God help me, the memory of that scene is with me now. It was too terrible for words; but after the storm came a calm, and a week later I went across to Boulogne with her, and saw her comfortably established there at a private hotel, where she was to remain as long as she liked, while she made up her mind as to her future residence. The furniture was sent to the Pantechnicon. The home was broken up for ever.”
“And the daughter, where was she?”
Lord Cheriton answered with a smile of infinite bitterness.
“The daughter had troubled us very little. Evelyn was not an exacting mother. The child’s existence was a burden to her—rendered hateful by the stigma upon her birth, which the mother could not forget. Mercy’s infancy was spent in a Buckinghamshire village, in the cottage of her foster-mother. Mother and daughter never lived under the same roof till they came here together, when Mercy was seven years old.”
“Yet, according to village tradition, Mrs. Porter was passionately fond of her daughter, and broken-hearted at her loss.”
“Village tradition often lies. I do not believe that Evelyn ever loved her child. She bitterly felt the circumstances of her birth—she bitterly resented her unhappy fate; but I believe it was her pride, her deep sense of wrong done to herself, which tortured her rather than her love for her only child. She is a strange woman, Theodore—a woman who could do that deed—a woman who could write that letter. Your friend has fathomed her unhappy secret. She was a mad woman when she fired that shot. She was mad when she penned that letter. And now, Theodore, I have trusted you as I have never before trusted mortal man. I have ripped open an old wound. You know all, and you see what lies before me. I have to find that woman and to save her from the consequences of her crime, and to save my daughter and my grandson from the hazards of a mad woman’s malignity. You can help me, Theodore, if you can keep a cool, clear brain, and do just what I ask you to do, and no more.”