A woman's debt

by William Le Queux

The two women were struck speechless by this bold declaration; they waited for further disclosures. One thing they were both sure of, that whatever his course of conduct might be, it would not be dictated by philanthropic motives.

He turned to the unhappy mother. “While making every allowance for the unfortunate circumstances in which you found yourself placed, Mrs. Morrice, I cannot acquit you of having proved a very unnatural parent. I find this bright intelligent young fellow condemned to an obscure existence with but little chance of bettering himself, while you, his mother, are a wealthy woman and living in the midst of refinement and luxury. I propose to remedy this, to place him in a position more suitable to him”—he paused for a second and added with deadly emphasis—“and in this laudable object I shall insist on his mother’s help.”

There was no mistaking what he meant. Alma, giving way to her naturally fiery temper, flashed out indignantly, “And supposing we refuse to abet this scheme of yours, what then?”

At this question, he no longer made a pretence of keeping on the mask. “In that case it will be my painful duty to inform Mr. Morrice that this lady, whom he honours so highly, is the widow of a criminal and the mother of John Graham, that criminal’s son.”

They knew him now for what he really was, a thorough-paced, plausible and ruthless blackguard, who would use any means to further his vile ends. But they were helpless and in his toils. Indignation failed to arouse his cold and pitiless nature, he met it with indifference. Any appeal to his better instincts only provoked a sardonic smile, and taunting allusions to “an unnatural mother.”

He forced his project through. His brother Archibald had recently died in Australia, nobody in England knew whether he was married or not. He would pass the young fellow off as that dead brother’s son. It was only fair that the young man should have the entrée to his mother’s house, should see something of refined life. What had Mrs. Morrice told her husband about her family? she must have told him something.

If Mrs. Morrice had kept her head just at this juncture, she could have told him that her husband knew her to be an only child, and that it was therefore impossible for her to have a nephew. But she was so confused that she blurted out the actual information she had given Mr. Morrice, that she was one of a family of three, herself, a brother and a married sister, both dead. She was never quite sure what reasons had prompted her to tell this lie to him—at the time it might have struck her that the introduction of these fictitious relatives gave a greater air of verisimilitude to her history.

But even if she had put a temporary check on Sir George’s schemes in this direction, he would soon have invented some other means of forcing himself and the young man into Deanery Street.

But now it was all very easy. Morrice, the most unsuspicious person in private life, had accepted his wife’s statements, and had hardly ever made the briefest allusion to these dead relatives or in fact to her family history at all.

She would now tell him that her sister had married Archibald Brookes, that the marriage had been a very unhappy one of which she did not care to speak, that her dislike of Archibald had extended to Sir George, for no particular reason, and that for years they had met as strangers; that learning he was about to adopt her sister’s child, she had agreed to bury the hatchet and take an interest in the young man’s welfare.