“Ask anything of me but to absent myself from home, dear wife. That I cannot do.”
Victoria turned to leave the room. Andrew’s troubled eyes followed her. “You are not angry with me, Victoria?”
“No, it would be silly of me to become angry over so simple a thing, but I am puzzled at your strange manner, Andrew. I fear you are concealing something which I ought to know.”
Andrew sank into a chair as Victoria left the room, and as he laid his head upon the table a heavy groan came from his white, trembling lips. Now that he was alone all the gayety of manner assumed to deceive Victoria left him, and the wretched man writhed in agony of spirit, until the drops of moisture rolled from his face, and covered the manuscript lying upon the table with great unsightly blots. “Concealing something which she ought to know,” he murmured. “Great God! if she only knew, if she only knew. If I dared tell her would the telling bring me peace? Would it bring me a sweet dreamless sleep, such as I have not known in fifteen years? Christ! Fifteen eternities have I lived in these years, but if I tell her I shall loose her, and ah, more bitter still, I shall loose my sunbeam, my little Mary. No, no, I can not, dare not tell her. She is beginning to love me. In time she will forget him and then, ah, what bliss will be mine when I shall hear her say ‘I love thee better than ever I loved thy brother.’ I scoff at religion in her presence, and pretend that I think there is no God, but merciful Father! do I not know that some day I shall be called to account for my crimes? That there is no hope for me in this world nor the next? Then, how dare I bend my knee in reverence and piety, when nothing but evil thoughts throng my brain?”
At this moment the door quietly opened and the roguish face of a child of six years peeped slyly in. Her laughing eyes grew serious as she heard the sobs of her father. She held a hideous rag doll in her arms, and as she stole on tip toe into the room, she placed one chubby finger on the slit where the doll’s mouth was supposed to be and whispered: “Don’t dare to breathe, Dinah. Don’t make the weentiest bit of noise, for poor papa has one of his bad, nasty headaches, and you will be sent from the room in disgrace. Now mind.” The child gravely put her hand upon her father’s knee, and as he gave a guilty start, she asked: “Is it very, very bad, dear papa? Can your comfort charm it away?”
Andrew snatched the child to his breast, and covered her face with kisses. This little one was the only being in all the great world to whom he dare show his heart. He nestled his face in the thick flaxen curls on his darling’s head. He was called a hard man by his fellow men. His servants knew him only as a relentless taskmaster, whose lightest word must be obeyed, but the child in his arms had never heard one harsh word from him, or seen other than a loving smile on her father’s face when in his presence; and she gave him love for love. She passionately adored the stern, gloomy-faced man, whose heart opened at her bidding as a flower opens to the sun. “I told Dinah you was sick, and so she mustn’t talk,” said the child, patting her father’s cheek, “and I think she deserves a merit card for her good behavior. She hasn’t said a word.”
The father started, and looked around the room, expecting to see a third person, but seeing nobody, he said: “And who may Dinah be, my angel?”
Mary raised the dilapidated doll. “Just as if you didn’t know, Papa Willing, when you have kissed my ownest own Dinah lots of times. There, there, don’t cry, baby, because papa has forgotten you. We shall not love him any more.” Mary soothed the imaginary crying baby so tenderly, and with so sweet an air of gravity, much like Victoria when soothing Mary’s childish grief, that Andrew laughed in spite of his gloomy thoughts, and caught Mary’s face between his hands. “You are a little witch,” he said, kissing the roguish face. “You are putting on all that love. Dinah is only a bundle of rags. You don’t love her.”
“I truly do,” replied Mary, clasping Dinah closer. “I love her best of all my children. She is so sweet.”
“She must be,” laughed Andrew. “Why she is simply disreputable. Where is the handsome Paris doll I gave you only last week?”