The friend concluded from this that it was debt which was troubling Dolff, “like all the young men.” And his mother, no doubt, had been obliged to draw her purse. It must have been some writ or something of that sort—which is a thing that still always seems to involve dungeons and horrors to women—which had taken the “police” to the Harwoods: for that the “police” had been at the house of the Harwoods everybody knew. Poor Dolff! but he had evidently got a lesson, and probably it would do good for him in the end, these good people thought.
Thus Mrs. Harwood’s plan was successful more than she could have hoped, and it seemed as if all would settle down again, and go well. Meredith had arranged everything for his appearance before the commissioners on her behalf. He had a very touching story to tell. The poor wife distracted by the arrival of her husband, whom she had supposed to be dead, but who was brought back to her when she was in her widow’s weeds, not dead, indeed, but mad, and as much severed from life and all its ways as if he had been dead indeed; and how she had no one to advise her, no one to consult with, and had come to a rash but heroic resolution to devote herself to him, to provide for his comfort secretly in her own house; and how he had been carefully tended by an experienced servant, and by herself until rheumatism crippled her and confined her to her chair—which still did not prevent her now and then from paying him visits, at the cost of great agony to herself, to see that all was well.
“Such things rarely get into the papers unless there is some special interest in them,” said Meredith. “I think with a little care we may keep it quiet, and then——”
“Then all will be safe,” said Mrs. Harwood, “and no secrecy whatever. Oh! my dear Charley, what I shall owe you!—the relief to my mind, above all.”
“You will owe me no more than you will pay me,” he said, with a laugh; “which will satisfy him also, as clearing off those debts which are so much on his mind. It is a transaction by which we shall all gain.”
This was not a point of view which was agreeable to Mrs. Harwood.
“I wish,” she said, “that you would not treat it in that way. It will be Gussy’s fortune. I have a right to give Gussy what I please. She has not said anything to me, but I hope you have spoken to Gussy——”
“As soon as the business is over,” he said, “when I shall have won—not only Gussy, but my share——”
“Oh! for heaven’s sake,” cried Mrs. Harwood, “do not speak of it like that.”