"Raise me up a little," she said to the surgeon; and they lifted her a little on the pillow. Then in low broken tones, with many a pause for strength and breath, with the dews of death standing upon her pallid brow, with the vision of life and judgment to come nearing her moment by moment in the presence of us all, Maria Haag made the confession of her life.
CHAPTER XIII
THE HOUSEKEEPER'S CONFESSION.
"They tell me I am a dying woman; and though I feel as I never felt before, I can hardly realize it. I never thought to bring myself to save the words I am going to say, to tell the story I am going to tell. All my life long I have been a wicked woman. I don't ask your pity—I do not want it; and if you now feel pitiful, seeing me lie here, when you have heard all, you will turn from me with loathing and spurn the miserable creature before you. No, I never thought it would come to this—that I should wish to tell out the sins of my life. But I have listened to words this night that I have not heard since the days of my childhood, from the lips of that good man, and they have done what nothing else could do. I could fancy myself a child once more, kneeling at my mother's knee and saying the 'Our Father;' lisping the prayers I have never dared to teach my child. My child! O God, [{235}] will he not curse his mother, knowing what she is, and what she has made him? My child, who will rise up in judgment against me at the last day, because in loving him I have worked his ruin! Better he had died, my fair-haired boy, nestling his baby head against my breast, cooing his baby cry in my ear, than live to be what I have made him. Better far we both had perished—mother and son—and been buried in one grave; the angels would not have veiled their faces then as they veil them now. Life and strength are ebbing fast, fast from me; and if I want to say all that I have to say—all the crushing load of guilty knowledge that lies upon my soul—I must hasten on. Lift me up a little more—it is hard to get breath—and turn my face from the light, sister. I can bear it better when it is dark. I go back to the beginning. One is standing there who has a right to know all I have to tell."
"I am a Belgian by birth, a native of Antwerp. My father was clerk in the custom-house there, and I was his only child. He and my mother lavished their love and their all upon me, and I received a very good education. At seventeen I met Robert Bradley; he was mate on board an English merchant-vessel. My parents looked down on him, but he loved me, and soon my heart was bent on him. We ran away together and were married at Plymouth. I never saw father nor mother nor my native place again. They died soon after; I broke their hearts. A year after our marriage my baby was born: it was the first joy unmixed with pain I had known since I left Antwerp when the boy was placed in my arms; it was the last I was ever to have. Six months after his birth Robert got into trouble; trouble that brought him in danger of the law. His employers dismissed him, and we were fated to quit Plymouth, where I had lived since our marriage whilst he was at sea. The little savings Robert had put by were soon gone, like his character, and we had to tramp, tramp, till we came to London. There he got temporary employment on the river; but he was changed. He was no longer like the Robert of old days, the man I had loved and for whom I had forsaken everything. Poverty pinched us very sorely; but if he had been what he was when I first knew him I would have minded nothing. But he degraded me, and I felt he would degrade my child. It was all I cared for now—my little boy; let him remember that. Oh! let him remember it, that he was all I loved and cared for! For more than a year we struggled on through misery untold. Robert drank terribly, and this vice brought out the coarseness of his nature, the low habits he had contracted amongst his seafaring associates. At last, when it came to seeing my boy wanting bread, I could bear it no longer; and one day I left the wretched hole where we lived, and with the child in my arms walked away from London. Miles away I wandered beyond the Surrey hills, with a little money in my pocket and my best and only gown on my back, lying down to rest in the sweet hay-fields or by the woodside, for it was summer-time, till at last one early morning I reached a little village, and sought rest and shelter at a small farmhouse. I found both, and I likewise found friends—or rather my child did. He was fair and winning with his baby beauty, and the mistress of the house took to him, having just lost hers. I stopped some months, helping her in all her household duties, for I was very thrifty and handy, and I earned my own bread and the boy's. But his future troubled me. I wanted money to educate him, to set him forward in life; and I determined to go into regular service. When my friends heard of this they offered to take charge of my little one, whom they loved as if he had been their own. So it happened that when I came across an advertisement for a married woman to take charge of a city merchant's house in London and act as housekeeper to him, I answered it. I referred to the people I lived [{236}] with and to the clergyman of the parish, and finally was engaged by Mr. Gilbert Thorneley. Perhaps the low wages I asked induced him to take me; perhaps having seen me, his keen shrewdness detected there was a story that was mine, and so could trade upon it and grind me down. Anyhow I entered his service in the spring of 1832. Of my husband up to that time I had heard nothing. I assumed my maiden name, and carefully concealed every clue to finding either myself or my child. The kind people who had taken charge of the boy were named Wilmot. He was christened Robert; but they gave him the name their dead child had borne, and he went by the name of 'Lister Wilmot.' I made no objection; it helped to conceal him from his father."
There was the movement of a violent shiver in the form that stood next to me, and a low muttered sound; I did not catch the words, but the dying woman must have heard something, for she paused and half turned her head, as if listening. Then after a moment she continued her narration:
"I have no need to describe to you Gilbert Thorneley's character. What right have I now, with death so close to me, to malign the dead! And yet I must tell, because it is part of the burden I am laying down, all the hatred, the contempt I felt for him as I got to know his meanness, his low cunning, his niggardly ways. The clerks he kept on miserable salaries, the workmen he employed and ground down to the uttermost farthing, all knew and told me of the heaps of wealth that were flowing into his coffers; how sum upon sum accumulated in his hands; and how his name was a byword and a proverb for a rich and prosperous man. And one hundredth part of that wealth had bought me the only joy I ever craved now—union with my child, and security for his future! I brooded over this in long lonely hours, brooded until I grew mad, until Satan entered into me, and I turned my face from God. Just at this time my master was away from home for many weeks. I did not know where he went, or on what business; but on his return he made two announcements to me: first, that he had bought a house and estate in Lincolnshire; and secondly, that he was going to be married. I replied I supposed he would now no longer want my services. To my surprise and dismay, he answered me by saying he should require me to go down to his new house and act there as housekeeper. He added he had discovered all about me, where my child was, and the whole story of my husband; that I was now in his power; if I would serve him faithfully I should never want for money, and that my boy should be forwarded in life. If I refused, he would make everything known, and put Robert on my track. I consented to remain in his service, and to do all that he required.
"I went down shortly into Lincolnshire to the Grange; and there he brought home his young bride. By this time I had got to know many of his secrets. I had sold myself to him and he paid me; handsomely enough for him, considering the miser that he was. His wife was not happy—how could she be? She was kept shut up in that dismal Grange from month to month, without a soul to speak to save him or me. He did not want her, he wanted her fortune. That has been told before. To spy upon her, to watch her, was my office down in those dreary fens; to walk with her, to attend her in her drives, never to lose sight of her except when with him. If she had liked me, if she had shown any kindness to me, I would have been her friend, and shielded her from the tyrant whom she called husband. But she treated me with haughtiness—undisguised contempt; me, who had her in my power. I have hot blood and passions in me, cold and phlegmatic as I seem; and she roused the passion of hatred within me. During my residence in Lincolnshire, my husband traced me out through an accidental circumstance. We had one interview. [{237}] He entreated me to return to him; but I would not. He threatened to keep and eye on me, to watch me. I dared him to it. Afterward I found that I had been foolish to brave him. A year after her marriage Mrs. Thorneley bore her first child; but before that an event occurred which influenced and sealed her fate. I detected her in two stolen interviews with a cousin of hers, an officer in the army. My master believed that when her aunt died she had no living relative left. I bear witness now that nothing passed at those interviews that all the world might not have heard; but I used my knowledge of them with Mr. Thorneley. I have said before he wanted her money and not her, and this cousin turning up frightened him. He accused her of all that was most shameful, egged on by me. I was the richer for it. I had now a goodly sum put by for my boy. Then the heir was born; a weakly, puling child. You know what he grew up to be—an idiot. Mrs. Thorneley was very ill; I knew her husband did not wish for her recovery. I did not suspect he absolutely wished her death. At last she died—suddenly. Only he and I were in the room, I was that 'other person' spoken of by him to Mr. Kavanagh. She died by prussic acid administered to her by him; and I discovered it. Henceforth he was in my power, not I in his. I kept silence, and the matter was hushed up with money.
"The baby was left to be nursed at the Grange; and my master and I returned to town. Once more I settled down to my old duties in the city house, bearing in my breast the knowledge of my master's fearful secret. All sense of right and wrong, all conscience, was deadened within me; the secret was mine—mine to turn into gold and riches for my child. I went down to visit him at the farm in Surrey; and as I pressed him in my arms I whispered to him of what he should be—a grand, rich gentleman.
"Two years after this time my masters widowed sister, Mrs. Atherton, died; and he adopted her only child, Hugh. I saw that this would prove either an aid or an obstacle to my plans. Very little, I found, was known about Mr. Thorneley's family; he had come to London as a lad, from a distant part of England. One evening I sought him, and opened my scheme to him. I had him in my power, terribly, irremediably; and he consented to it. I was to bring my boy away from Surrey, and he would adopt and bring him up as the child of another sister, with his nephew, Hugh Atherton. He was to retain the name of Lister Wilmot.
"Excepting during occasional hasty visits to the Grange, Mr. Thorneley never saw his son and heir. The child had been born an idiot; that he would ever be otherwise was hopeless.