“They were very poor, but they pinched themselves for the sake of the stricken wretch that was thrown on their mercy. It was a woman again who succored me the third time,” continued Mr. Cheyne: “you may judge how sacred women are in my eyes now! Dear motherly Mrs. Van Hollick! when she at last suffered me to depart, she kissed and blessed me as though I were her own son. Never to my dying day shall I forget her goodness. My one thought, after seeing Magdalene, will be how I am to repay her goodness,—how I can make prosperity flow in on the little household, that the cruse and cake may never fail!”
“But,” interrupted Phillis at this point, “did you not write, or your friends write for you, to England?”
Mr. Cheyne smiled bitterly:
“It seems as though some strange fatality were over me. Yes, I wrote. I wrote to Magdalene, to my lawyer, and to another friend who had known me all my life, but the ship that carried these letters was burnt at sea. I only heard that when I at last worked my way to Portsmouth as a common sailor and in that guise presented myself at my lawyer’s chambers. Poor man! I thought he would have fainted when he saw me. He owned afterwards he was a believer in ghosts at that moment.”
“How long ago was that?” asked Phillis, gently.
“Two months; not longer. It was then I heard of my children’s death, of my wife’s long illness and her strange state. I was ill myself, and not fit to battle through any more scenes. Mr. Standish took me home until I had rested and recovered myself a little; and then I put on this disguise—not that much of that is necessary, for few people would recognize me, I believe—and came down here and took possession of Mrs. Williams’s lodgings.”
Phillis looked at him with mute questioning in her eyes. She did not venture to put it into words, but he understood her:
“Why have I waited so long, do you ask? and why am I living here within sight of my own house, a spy on my own threshold and wife? My dear Miss Challoner, there is a bitter reason for that!
“Four years ago I parted from my wife in anger. There were words said that day that few women could forgive. Has she forgiven them? That is what I am trying to find out. 251 Will the husband who has been dead to her all these years be welcome to her living?” His voice dropped into low vehemence, and a pallor came over his face as he spoke.
Phillis laid her hand on his own. She looked strangely eager: