We began to pace up and down the garden together, she wringing her hands and writhing with pain and emotion.
‘Do consider,’ I said, ‘that he has kept out of the way all these years, and that he is not likely to trouble you now.’
‘Oh! I can’t bear to think. The children—poor Charlie, what will become of us all?’
‘The children will take no harm,’ I said, ‘if you act prudently. All will be well; and your late husband is out of the reach of any trouble.’
‘Ah yes, poor Charlie! I wish I had died with him. Even now he may be reproaching me! How dreadful, dreadful it all is!’
I could not give her much consolation; for besides these troubles of the heart, other and less manageable difficulties I saw were impending.
At the first blush it was impossible to say what would become of us all in this imbroglio. Certainly if any one were entitled to be considered Collingwood Dawson, it was the man who had originated the works by which he had obtained his fame. On the other hand, he would never have had any success himself. No publisher would have looked twice at books which were so violent and coarse. All the labour and pains that had been taken in bringing his writings into an acceptable form, were they to go for nothing? And was it to be allowed that a man who had thrown off all ties and abandoned his place in the world, should resume them when other people had made them worth possessing? It seemed not; and yet the law would be on his side.
There was only one consoling feature in the position—the man had no money. He could not move without that; and if he had been able to obtain it from any other source, he would hardly have come to borrow from a stranger; but this was a very frail barrier after all. He might, if he were determined to get back to England, find his way to the nearest port, and get passed home by the consul as a distressed British subject. Why he had not gone over to England when he first discovered the use that had been made of his talents, was probably because he waited to complete some work he had in hand, which might serve as an introduction to the publishers, and a sort of voucher for his claim.
Was there, however, no possibility of mistake? Was it perfectly certain that this was the missing husband? Mrs Collingwood had no hope that there was any error. She knew him perfectly. It was impossible that there should be two such people in the world together, identical in mind and in person. That his handwriting had so completely changed, seemed to her unaccountable; but it did not move her faith in his identity. And an explanation was soon found for this; for he had lost his right hand since his flight, and consequently wrote with his left.
I said just now that I could give Mrs Collingwood no comfort; but there was one thing that bound us all together and insured sympathy between us: we were so to speak all in the same boat. Our livelihood depended upon keeping up the integrity of Collingwood Dawson.