“Lor’—this’ll be news for Toby!” she cried; “this’ll be something to laugh at in the village; that they’ve taken my boy for Dandy Chater, and called him names, and ’unted ’im with perlice and sich like——”
“Stop—stop!” he cried, hurriedly. “Not a word of this to a soul, little mother—not a word. Don’t you see the position in which I stand? My brother is dead; I have upon me, at the present moment, his clothes, his papers—his valuables. Good God, little mother—I’ve traded on his name, and on his appearance; I’m mixed up in I know not what shady things concerning him. Turn to any living soul about here to-night—save yourself—and tell my story. They will laugh you to scorn; will deride your boy, who’s come back from the grave. Don’t you see that their first question would naturally be—‘If you are not Dandy Chater—you who wear his clothes, and use his name, and hide by night, because of his sins—if you are not the man, where is he?’ And, Heaven help me—what am I to answer them?”
Betty Siggs seemed altogether nonplussed, and could only shake her head. Philip, with his arm about her, did his best to cheer her up again.
“Come—you mustn’t be down-hearted; I’ll pull through, somehow or other,” he said. “But, for the time, I must keep out of the way. Every day I’m getting nearer to the truth about my brother’s death; every day I seem to see my way more clearly. But I don’t want to be accused of his murder—for they might say, with perfect justice, that I murdered him, the better to take his place. No—I want to track down the real man; when that time comes, I’ll call on you to speak. Until then, you must be silent as the grave.”
“I can’t—I can’t!” cried Betty Siggs. “Is my dear boy to come back to me, after all these years—and am I to see ’im ’unted an’ drove like this ’ere, by a mere common Tokely—an’ say nothink? Not me!” Betty Siggs folded her arms, and nodded her head with much determination.
“Little mother—little mother!” he exclaimed—“do you want to ruin me? Do you want to undo all that I have tried so hard to bring about? Shall I tell you something more?—something to be hidden deep in that good heart of yours, and never breathed to any one? Betty—you don’t mind my calling you Betty—do you?—have you ever been in love?”
“P’raps you’d like to ask Toby, as is a snorin’ ’is ’ead off upstairs this very minute,” retorted Mrs. Siggs, with a very becoming blush. “In love, indeed!”
“Well then, you will understand my difficulty. I’m in love, little mother—and with the sweetest girl in all the world. But even in that, my ill-luck dogs me; for she believes that her lover is Dandy Chater, whom she has known for years; if she once heard that she had whispered her words of love and tenderness and sympathy to a stranger—do you think that she would look at me again? Little mother—it’s the maddest thing in the world; because, if she has any regard for me as Dandy Chater, she knows me for everything that’s bad and vile—food only for the common hangman; while, on the other hand, as Philip Chater I am a stranger, and farther from her than ever. In any case, it is hopeless; yet, knowing that whatever sympathy she has is given to Dandy Chater, I’ll be Dandy Chater to the end—whatever that end may be. And even you, little mother, shall not change that purpose. So don’t talk about it.”
She recognised—however unwillingly—that what he said was true; although she cried a little—partly for love of him, partly in terror at his danger—she yet was comforted by the feeling that all the sad years of mourning were swept away, and that the boy she had reared and loved had fulfilled her most sanguine expectations and had grown to the manhood she had pictured for him.
He got up, and took her tenderly in his arms again, to say good-bye. “It won’t be long, little mother,” he said, “before I come again to you, and take my place in my father’s home. But, for the present, I want you to swear to me—to swear to me on something you love well—that you will not betray my secret. Betty—for the love of your boy—swear to me that you will not betray me—will not take from me the love of the woman who is more to me than anything else in the wide world. Swear to me!”