“You shall never have a penny of it,” cried Mrs. Preston—“not a penny, if you should be starving—nor Pamela either; I will tell her all—that you wanted her for her money; and she will scorn you as I do—you shall have nothing from her or me.”
“Answer for yourself,” cried Jack, furious, “or be silent. She shall not be brought in. What do I care for your money? Sara, be quiet, and don’t cry. She ought never to have been brought here.”
“No,” cried the old woman, in her passion, “I ought to have been cast out on the roadside, don’t you think, to die if I liked? or I ought to have been killed, as you tried last night. That’s what you would do to me, while you slept soft and lived high. But my time has come. It’s you who must go to the door—the door!—and you need expect no pity from me.”
She sat in her feebleness and poverty as on a throne, and defied them, and they stood together bewildered by their ignorance, and did not know what answer to make her. Though it sounded like madness, it might be true. For any thing they could tell, what she was saying might have some foundation unknown to them. Sara by this time had dried her tears, and indignation had begun to take the place of distress in her mind. She gave her brother an appealing look, and clasped her hands. “Jack, answer her—do you know what to say to her?” she cried, stamping her little foot on the ground with impatience; “somebody must know; are we to stand by and hear it all, and do nothing? Jack, answer her!—unless she is mad—”
“I think she must be partly mad,” said Jack. “But it must be put a stop to somehow. Go and fetch my father. He is in the library. Whatever it may be, let us know at least what it means. I will stay with her here.”
When she heard these words, the strange inmate of Sara’s room came down from her height and relapsed into a feeble old woman. She called Sara not to go, to stay and protect her. She shrank back into her chair, drawing it away into a corner at the farthest distance possible, and sat there watchful and frightened, eying Jack as a hunted creature might eye the tiger which might at any moment spring upon it. Jack, for his part, with an exclamation of impatience, turned on his heel and went away from her, as far as space would permit. Impatience began to swallow up every other sentiment in his mind. He could not put up with it any longer. Whatever the truth might be, it was evident that it must be faced and acknowledged at once. While he kept walking about impatient and exasperated, all his respect for Pamela’s mother died out of his mind; even, it must be owned, in his excitement, the image of Pamela herself went back into the mists. A certain disgust took possession of him. If it was true that his father had schemed and struggled for the possession of this woman’s miserable money—if the threat of claiming it had moved him with some vague but awful temptation, such as Jack shuddered to think of; and if the idea of having rights and possessing something had changed the mild and humble woman who was Pamela’s mother into this frantic and insulting fury, then what was there worth caring for, what was there left to believe in, in this world? Perhaps even Pamela herself had been changed by this terrible test. Jack did not wish for the wings of a dove, being too matter-of-fact for that. But he felt as if he would like to set out for New Zealand without saying a word to any body, without breathing a syllable to a single soul on the way. It seemed as if that would be the only thing to do—he himself might get frantic or desperate too like the others about a little money. The backwoods, sheep-shearing, any thing would be preferable to that.
This pause lasted for some minutes, for Sara did not immediately return. When she came back, however, a heavier footstep accompanied her up the stair. Mr. Brownlow came into the room, and went at once toward the farther corner. He had made up his mind; once more he had become perfectly composed, calm as an attorney watching his client’s case. He called Jack to him, and went and stood by the table, facing Mrs. Preston. “I hear you have sent for me to know the meaning of all this,” he said; “I will tell you, for you have a right to know. Twenty-five years ago, before either of you was born, I had some money left me, which was to be transferred to a woman called Phœbe Thomson, if she could be found out or appeared within twenty-five years. I searched for her everywhere, but I could not find her. Latterly I forgot her existence to a great extent. The five-and-twenty years were out last night, and just before the period ended this—lady—as you both know, appeared. She says she is Phœbe Thomson, the legatee I have told you of. She may be so—I have nothing to say against her; but the proof lies with her, not me. This is all the explanation there is to make.”
When he had said it he drew a long breath of relief. It was the truth. It was not perhaps all the truth; but he had told the secret, which had weighed him down for months, and the burden was off his heart. He felt a little sick and giddy as he stood there before his children. He did not look them in the face. In his heart he knew there were many more particulars to tell. But it was not for them to judge of his heart. “I have told you the secret, so far as there is a secret,” he said, with a faint smile at them, and then sat down suddenly, exhausted with the effort. It was not so difficult after all. Now that it was done, a faint wonder crossed his mind that he had not done it long ago, and saved himself all this trouble. But still he was glad to sit down. Somehow, it took the strength out of him as few things had done before.
“A legatee!” burst forth Sara in amazement, not understanding the word. “Is that all? Papa, she says the house is hers, and every thing is hers. She says we have no right here. Is it true?”
As for Jack, he looked his father steadily in the face, asking, Was it true? more imperiously than Sara’s words did. If this were all, what was the meaning of the almost tragedy last night? They forgot the very existence of the woman who was the cause of it all as they turned upon him. Poverty and wealth were small matters in comparison. He was on his trial at an awful tribunal, before judges too much alarmed, too deeply interested, to be lenient. They turned their backs upon Mrs. Preston, who, notwithstanding her fear and her anxiety, could not bear the neglect. Their disregard of her roused her out of her own self-confidence and certainty, to listen with a certain forlorn eagerness. She had not paid much attention to what Mr. Brownlow said the first time. What did it matter what he said? Did not she know better? But when Jack and Sara turned their backs on her, and fixed their eyes on their father, she woke up with an intense mortification and disappointment at finding herself overlooked, and began to listen too.