‘If he had really cared a straw for you he would never have come here!’ cried Mrs. Tracy. ‘Love!—call that love! for a man without a penny! I call it pure selfishness. But he shall never come near you again,—never. Oh, what am I to do?—where am I to take you? We cannot stay here.’
‘We are going to Wiesbaden, for your health,’ said Millicent. It came upon her all at once that she had told him so, making use, involuntarily, of her mother’s suggestion. ‘Wait, and see what comes of it,’ she added, with oracular meaning, which she did not herself understand. And after a while Mrs. Tracy’s passion sank into quiet too. When people live from day to day without any power of arranging matters beforehand, and specially when they live upon their wits, trusting to the scheme of the minute for such comforts as it can secure, they have to believe in chances good and evil. Something might come of it. Somehow, at the last moment, matters might mend. She sat down with that power of abstracting herself from her anxiety which is given to the mind of the adventurer, and recovered her breath, and took her cup of tea. She had scarcely finished that refreshment when the maid knocked at the drawing-room door with Ben’s letter. Mrs. Tracy flew at her daughter as though she would have torn the meaning out of the paper, which Millicent opened with the slowness of agitation; but she had to wait all the same while it was gone over twice, every word; the very enclosures in it,—and it was very evident that there were enclosures,—were hidden in Millicent’s clenched hand from her mother’s eyes. She was wilfully cruel in her self-humiliation. And yet it was Mrs. Tracy, and not Millicent, who answered the letter which poor Ben had written, as it were, with his heart’s blood.
CHAPTER VIII.
MRS. TRACY’S I. O. U.
Mrs. Tracy’s answer to Ben’s letter was as follows:—
‘My Dear Mr. Renton,—Millicent has placed your most kind and generous letter in my hands. It is everything I have said, but it is a very extraordinary letter as well; and it is impossible for a young creature without any knowledge of the world to answer it. It takes all my judgment,—and I have passed through a good deal,—to decide how to do it. I would not for the world hurt your feelings, dear Mr. Renton, and I am convinced that to act according to the dictates of pride, and decline your most kind little loan, would be to hurt your feelings. Therefore I make the sacrifice of my own. I don’t replace your notes in this, as pride tempts me to do. I keep them for your sake.
‘And, besides,—why should I hesitate to confess it?—we are poor. I cannot do for Millicent,—I cannot do for myself, though that matters less,—what I would. I don’t know how far my poor child went in her confidences to you to-day. She was agitated,—and she is still agitated,—though I have done all I could to soothe her. She is much affected by your sympathy and generosity; and yet, with the shrinking delicacy which characterises her, she cannot forgive herself for telling you. “I could not help it, mamma,—he was so feeling,” my poor darling says to me, with tears in her eyes. God bless you, dear Mr. Renton! With this timely aid, which I accept as a loan, my Millicent’s poor mother may still be spared to watch over her child. It would have been impossible for me to go, and I tried to hide from my pet the urging of my physicians. Now it is all clear before us. I enclose a memorandum for the amount at five per cent interest; but what interest can ever repay the kind consideration, the ready thoughtfulness? I can never forget it, and neither can Millicent. When I say that we shall leave almost immediately, I but say that we are carrying out your intention. We shall miss you in that strange land. How sweet if we could hope to meet our benefactor among its gay groups! Millicent tells me something about your circumstances, which it seems impossible to believe. But if it should be true, dear Mr. Renton, how sweet it will be to your mind to feel that your little savings, if diverted from their original intention, will yet go to carry out one of the most sacred offices of Christianity,—to save a mother, the sole guide and protector of her innocence, to her only child!
‘Believe me, my dear Mr. Renton, with the sincerest kind regards and good wishes,
‘Yours obliged and most truly,
‘Maria Tracy.’
‘Will that do?’ she said, thrusting the paper across the table to Millicent, who sat looking on. Her mother’s style of letter-writing was very well known to her; but her heart was beating a little quicker than usual, and it was not without excitement that she took it up. Altogether, the day had been a strange one for her. It had brought her in contact with genuine, real passion; and at the same time with a rare, almost unknown thing to her,—a man, with all the instincts of power, unconscious of those restraints which make I dare not wait upon I would. There is something in wealth which now and then confers a certain moral power and unthought-of force and energy. Millicent’s friends and lovers had been hitherto of a class quite different from Ben. They had been men to whom appearance was more than reality,—who were accustomed to look richer than they were, and to own the restrictions of small means,—men who could not, had they wished it, have cut a way for her through a difficulty, as Ben did with sudden flash of purpose. In fact, he was poorer than any of the half-bred men to whom Mrs. Tracy had all but offered her daughter; but the habit of hesitation or considering possibilities had not yet come upon him. Simply, he had not been able to bear the thought of want or difficulty or pain for her, and had rushed at the matter without a moment’s pause, or any consideration but that of doing her service. It was quite new to Millicent. It dazzled her imagination more a long way than it touched her heart. She was not grateful to speak of, but she was profoundly impressed by the man to whom a hundred pounds,—that mighty object of thought to herself and everybody she had ever known,—was no more than a bouquet or a pair of gloves. She was not, even at that moment, ashamed of having all but asked, or of receiving, his help. She was only dazzled by the magnificence, the sudden lavish zeal and service of her lover. She read her mother’s letter slowly and critically. ‘As if he wanted to be paid back, or have interest at five per cent!’ she said. The mother’s were very different thoughts.
‘It looks better,’ she said. ‘And if we ever are able to pay him back, Millicent,—besides, it is putting it in a business way. Every man likes to see things put in a business way; though this is such a young fool——’ said Mrs. Tracy. ‘I never met with such a fool in my life.’