“No, my dear John, there is no relenting, no awakening of maternal love. For me that must remain for ever a meaningless phrase. For me there can be nothing now or ever more, except a sense of aversion and horror—a shrinking from the very image of the child that must never call me mother, or know the link between us. All that can possibly be done to sever that link I shall do; and I entreat you, by the love of past years, to help me in so doing. My only chance of peace in the future is in total severance. Remember that I am prepared to make any sacrifice that can secure the happiness of this wretched being, that can make up to her—”
“That can make up to her!”
Mildred’s clutch tightened upon the letter. This was the first mention of the infant’s sex.
“—For the dishonour to which she is born. I will gladly devote half my fortune to her maintenance and her future establishment in life, if she should grow up and marry. Remember also that I have sworn to myself never to entertain any proposal of marriage, never to listen to words of love from any man upon earth. You need have no fear of future embarrassment on my account. I shall never give a man the right to interrogate my past life. I resign myself to a solitary existence—but not to a life clouded with shame. When I go back to England and resume my place in society, I shall try to think of this last year of agony as if it were a bad dream. You alone know my secret, and you can help me if you will. My prayer is that from the hour I see the child transferred to the new nurse at Dijon, I shall never look upon its face again. The nurse can go back to her home as fast as the train will carry her, and I can go back to London with you.”
The next letter was written seven years later, and addressed from Kensington Gore:
“I suppose I ought to answer your long letter by saying that I am glad the child has good health, that I rejoice in her welfare, and so on. But I cannot be such a hypocrite. It hurts me to write about her; it hurts me to think of her. My heart hardens itself against her at every suggestion of her quickness, or her prettiness, or any other merit. To me she can be nothing except—disgrace. I burnt your letter the instant it was read. I felt as if some one was looking over my shoulder as I read it. I dared not go down to lunch for fear Mrs. Winstanley’s searching eyes should read my secret in my face. I pretended a headache, and stayed in my room till our eight-o’clock dinner, when I knew I should be safe in the dim religious light which my chaperon affects as the most flattering to wrinkles and pearl-powder.
“But I am not ungrateful, my dear John. I am touched even by your kindly interest in that unfortunate waif. I have no doubt you have done wisely in placing her with the good old lady at Barnes, and that she is very happy running about the Common. I am glad I know where she is, so that I may never drive that way, if I can possibly help it. Your old lady must be rather a foolish woman, I should think, to change Fanny into Fay, on the strength of the child’s airy movements and elfin appearance; but as long as this person knows nothing of her charge’s history her silliness cannot matter.”
A letter of a later date was addressed from Lewes Crescent.
“I am horrified at what you have done. O, John, how could you be so reckless, so forgetful of my reiterated entreaties to keep that girl’s existence wide apart from mine or yours? And you have actually introduced her into your own house as a relation; and you actually allow her to be called by your name! Was ever such madness? You stultify all that has been done in the past. You open the door to questionings and conjectures of the most dreadful kind. No, I will not see her. You must be mad to suggest such a thing. My feeling about her to-day is exactly the same as my feeling on the day she was born—disgust, horror, dread. I will never—willingly—look upon her face.
“Do you remember those words in Bleak House? ‘Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers.’ So it is with that girl and me. Can love be possible where there is this mutual disgrace?