“Now it comes back to me,” he said. “I—I—am afraid I gave it no importance. There was a baby—yes, a little thing a few weeks, or a few months old—that died.”
She sprang up again once more to her feet, menacing, terrible. She was bigger, stronger, far more full of life, than he was. She towered over him, her face full of tragic passion. “It is not true—it is not true!” she cried.
“My dear lady, how can I know? What can I do? I can but tell you the instructions given to me; it had slipped out of my mind, it seemed of little importance in comparison. A baby that was too delicate to bear the separation from its mother—I remember it all now. I am very sorry, very sorry, if I have conveyed any false hopes to your mind. The baby died not long after it was taken away.”
“It is not true,” Miss Bethune said, with a hoarse and harsh voice. After the excitement and passion, she stood like a figure cut out of stone. This statement, so calm and steady, struck her like a blow. Her lips denied, but her heart received the cruel news. It may be necessary to explain good fortune, but misery comes with its own guarantee. It struck her like a sword, like a scythe, shearing down her hopes. She rose into a brief blaze of fury, denying it. “Oh, you think I will believe that?” she cried,—“me that have followed him in my thoughts through every stage, have seen him grow and blossom, and come to be a man! Do you think there would have been no angel to stop me in my vain imaginations, no kind creature in heaven or earth that would have breathed into my heart and said, ‘Go on no more, hope no more’? Oh no—oh no! Heaven is not like that, nor earth! Pain comes and trouble, but not cruel fate. No, I do not believe it—I will not believe it! It is not true.”
“My dear lady,” said the old gentleman, distressed.
“I am no dear lady to you. I am nothing to you. I am a poor, deserted, heartbroken woman, that have lived false, false, but never meant it: that have had no one to stand by me, to help me out of it. And now you sit there calm, and look me in the face, and take away my son. My baby first was taken from me, forced out of my arms, new-born: and now you take the boy I’ve followed with my heart these long, long years, the bonnie lad, the young man I’ve seen. I tell you I’ve seen him, then. How can a mother be deceived? We’ve seen him, both Gilchrist and me. Ask her, if you doubt my word. We have seen him, can any lie stand against that? And my heart has spoken, and his heart has spoken; we have sought each other in the dark, and taken hands. I know him by his bonnie eyes, and a trick in his mouth that is just my father over again: and he knows me by nature, and the touch of kindly blood.”
“Oh, mem,” Gilchrist cried, “I warned ye—I warned ye! What is a likeness to lippen to? And I never saw it,” the woman said, with tears.
“And who asked ye to see it, or thought ye could see it, a serving-woman, not a drop’s blood to him or to me? It would be a bonnie thing,” said Miss Bethune, pausing, looking round, as if to appeal to an unseen audience, with an almost smile of scorn, “if my hired woman’s word was to be taken instead of his mother’s. Did she bear him in pain and anguish? Did she wait for him, lying dreaming, month after month, that he was to cure all? She got him in her arms when he was born, but he had been in mine for long before; he had grown a man in my heart before ever he saw the light of day. Oh, ask her, and there is many a fable she will tell ye. But me!"—she calmed down again, a smile came upon her face,—“I have seen my son. Now, as I have nobody but him, he has nobody but me: and I mean from this day to take him home and acknowledge him before all the world.”
Mr. Templar had risen, and stood with his hand on the back of his chair. “I have nothing more to say,” he said. “If I can be of any use to you in any way, command me, madam. It is no wish of mine to take any comfort from you, or even to dispel any pleasing illusion.”
“As if you could!” she said, rising again, proud and smiling. “As if any old lawyer’s words, as dry as dust, could shake my conviction, or persuade me out of what is a certainty. It is a certainty. Seeing is believing, the very vulgar say. And I have seen him—do you think you could make me believe after that, that there is no one to see?”