Fan was prepared for this. There were some things not to be revealed; she remembered that Mary had looked into her very soul when she had heard the strange story, and her quick apprehension and knowledge of human nature had no doubt supplied the links that were missing in it. Now by anticipation she had prepared a narrative which would run smoothly, and began it without further delay; and for half an hour Constance listened with intense interest, only interrupting to bestow a kiss and whisper a tender consoling word when her friend was at last compelled, with faltering speech, to confess that she was no legitimate child of her father.
“Oh, Fan, I am so glad that this has happened to you. So much more glad than if I had myself experienced some great good fortune. And your brother—oh, how nobly he has acted—how much you must love and admire him! I remember that evening so well when you met him; I thought then that I had never seen anyone with so charming a manner. And there was something so melodious and sympathetic in his voice; how strange that it never struck me as being like yours, and that he was like you in his eyes, and so many things!”
“But tell me about yourself, Constance.”
“I could put it all in twenty words, but that would not be fair, and would not satisfy you. Since our marriage we have simply been drifting down the current, getting poorer and poorer, and also moving about from place to place—I mean since you lost sight of us. And at last it was impossible for us to go any lower, for we were destitute, and—it will shock you to hear it—obliged even to pledge our clothes to buy bread.”
“And you would not write to me, Constance, nor even to your mother! I know that, because I wrote to her to ask for your address, and she replied that she did not know it, that I knew more about your movements in London than she did.”
“I could not write to you, Fan, knowing that you barely had enough to keep yourself, and that it would only have distressed you. Nor could I write to them at home. Those poor fields they have to live on are mortgaged almost up to their value, and after paying interest they have little left for expenses in the house. Besides, Fan, we had already received help from Mr. Eden and other friends, and it had proved worse than useless. It only seemed to have the effect of making us less able to help ourselves.”
“And your husband—was he not earning something with his lecturing and the articles he wrote?”
“Not with the lecturing, as you call it. With the articles, yes, but very little. They were political articles, you know, and were printed in socialistic papers, and not many of them were paid for. But after a while all his enthusiasm died out; he could not go on with it, and was not prepared with anything else. He grew to hate the whole thing at last, and was a little too candid with his former friends when he told them that they were a living proof of the judgment Carlyle had passed on his countrymen. It was hardly safe for him to walk about the streets among the people who had begun to expect great things from him. It is a dreadful thing to say, but it is the simple truth, that our next move would have been to the workhouse. And just then his illness began. He was out all night and met with some accident; it was a pouring wet night, and he was brought home in the morning bruised and injured, soaking wet, and the result was a fever and cough, which turned to something like consumption. He has suffered terribly, and I have sometimes despaired of his life; but he is better now, I think—I hope. Only this dreadful heat we are having keeps him so weak. You can't imagine how anxiously we are looking forward to a change in the weather; the cool days will so refresh him when they come.”
“But, Constance, you haven't told me yet how you escaped what you were fearing when he first fell ill.”
The other looked up, tears starting in her eyes, and a glow of warm colour coming into her pale cheeks. “Oh, Fan,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion, “have you not yet guessed who came to us in our darkest hour and saved us from worse things than we had already known? Yes; Mr. Northcott, a poor unemployed clergyman, without any private income, struggling for his own subsistence, and frequently in bad health; but no rich and powerful man could have given us such help and comfort. How can I tell it all to you? He found us out after we left Norland Square. He had left Eyethorne shortly after we did, but not before he had heard from mother about my marriage, and my husband's name. He introduced himself to Merton one evening at a socialistic meeting, and after that he occasionally came to see us, and he and Merton had endless arguments, for he was not a socialist. But they became great friends, and he was always trying to persuade my husband to turn his talents to other things. He wished Merton to try his hand at little descriptive and character sketches, interspersed with incidents partly true and partly fictitious. He said that I would be able to help; and one day he related a little incident, minutely describing the actors in it, and begged us to write it out in the way he suggested, but unfortunately the idea never took with Merton. He thought it too trivial; or else he could not work. So I tried my hand alone at it; and Harold saw what I had done, and asked me to rewrite it, and make some alterations which he suggested. Then he sent me a rough sketch he had written and asked me to work it up in the same way as the first; and when I had finished it I sent him the two papers together. Shortly afterwards, when Merton was ill and I was at my wits' end, Harold came to say that he had sold the sketches to the editor of the Lady's Pictorial, who liked them so much that he wished to have more from the same hand. Imagine how glad I was to get the cheque Harold had brought me! But about the other sketches asked for, I told him that I could not write them because I had no materials. He had supplied me with incidents, characters, and descriptions of localities for the first time, and I could not go about to find fresh matter for myself. He said that he had thought of that, and that he was prepared to supply me with as much material as I required. He would give me facts, and my fancy would do the rest. He only laughed at the idea that I would be sucking his brains and depriving him of his own means of subsistence. He was always about among the poor, he said, and talking to people of all descriptions, and hearing and seeing things well worth being told in print, but he was without the special kind of talent and style of writing necessary to give literary form to such matter. His tastes lay in other directions, and the only writing he could do was of a very different kind. Then I gladly consented, and Merton was pleased also, and promised to help; but—poor fellow—he has not had the strength to do anything yet.”