CHAPTER VI.

_MR. ROBINSON PROMISES TO DO HIS BEST._

But all was false and hollow; though his tongue Dropp'd manna, and could make the worse appear The better reason, to perplex and dash Maturest counsels.

"Let us look at the matter in this light, Mrs. Grey." The speaker was Mr. Robinson, and his tone was particularly lively. "Your husband has cause, fancied or real--for the sake of argument we must put that part of the question aside--your husband, we shall say, has cause of complaint against you. He has ceased to consider you a fit guardian for his daughter after the first unconsciousness of childhood. What ought to be his method of proceeding in such a case? Why, clearly this. He should advertise you, through your solicitor, of his desire, and allow him to negotiate between you. Had he done so, my advice no doubt would have been of some service. I should have suggested that Miss Laura should be placed, for the time being, in some educational establishment where both parents could have had access to her, even, if Mr. Grey had insisted upon this point, under certain restrictions on your side."

Mr. Robinson paused at this point as if for consideration. Mrs. Grey shivered slightly, and drew her shawl more closely round her shoulders. It was a beautiful July day. The sun was shining brightly, the birds were singing, there was the warm breath of summer upon everything, but Margaret was like one stricken with a chill. Her face was pale and haggard, her dark mournful eyes were sunken, her long white fingers, almost transparent, twitched nervously from time to time.

"But Mr. Grey has _not_ acted in this way," she said with some fretfulness in her tone.

"Patience, my dear lady," he answered in the lively manner with which he had entered upon the subject; "we are coming to that point presently. Affliction, you know, cometh not forth of the dust. Job suffered grievously, but held fast his integrity. In _this_ world tribulation; your trials are sent; you must ask for the grace of patience, that you may be enabled to bear them worthily. But to return. The first point we should consider is this: Who was actually the person that removed your daughter from your care? the second, How and in what method was such removal accomplished? In this you must help me. Will you try and make a concise statement of the events of the day in question--what your occupations were, how your child came to be alone--giving me also the grounds of your suspicion that Mr. Grey is a party to the kidnapping of his child?--Rather amusing, by the bye, when one comes to think of it--a father running away with his own daughter." Mr. Robinson laughed pleasantly at his own joke, which did not seem to impress his companion so agreeably.

Margaret rose from her chair impatiently, rang the bell and walked to the door of the room: "I shall send you the servant, Mr. Robinson; she was the only person in the house when my daughter was taken away."

She went out into the garden and stood under the trees. The sun was falling on her hair, the soft wind swept it back from her brow, but her pale lips quivered, and from her eyes came no responsive gladness to meet the beauty of the summer morning. She was wondering why she had sent for this man, why she had laid bare her bleeding heart. Would it not have been better, a thousand times better, to have hidden this last anguish as she had hidden the others--to have suffered and wept in silence? For the lawyer's keen criticism and unsparing common sense had been like a kind of analysis of her torture--had added to her sorrow the agony of undeserved humiliation. Her husband _had_ insulted her. This was the bitterest drop in her cup of anguish, and this Mr. Robinson, a representative of the world, which is given to harsh judgment of the weak, had not failed to bring clearly before her mind. It was bitterly hard to be borne.

She thought, and bowed her head upon her breast with a sigh that seemed to drain the life-blood from her heart. How was it that everything grated upon her, wounded her? What had she expected, then? she asked herself. That this man, a man of business, with interests and affections of his own, would enter tenderly and religiously into the sanctuary of her grief, would touch her wound lightly, would bring help without adding suffering? Was it not folly, madness? But she would cast this morbid sentimentality aside; Heaven would grant her in time the hardness she needed.

She sat down on a seat under the tree. She could see through the parlor-window that Jane was taking full advantage of her position. She was interviewing the lawyer to some effect, talking volubly and illustrating her statement with expressive gestures.

Margaret could not help smiling faintly. As a calmer mood returned she felt she had put herself in a somewhat ridiculous position. She returned to the house, breaking in upon a florid account of Jane's terror on the night following Laura's disappearance. "That's quite enough, Jane," she said, some of her old dignity in her voice and manner; "you may go down stairs now."

The landlady by no means approved of the interruption. She had been giving the lawyer her statement, in keen and hungry expectation of his. He would probably, she thought, unfold to her some of the mysteries that had been perplexing her, and now she was summarily dismissed.

There was some malignity in the glance she cast upon her mistress, but Margaret was too much engrossed in the business upon which she was bent to take the slightest notice of her. Jane retired--as far as the next room, that is to say, hoping some fragments of the conversation would reach her.

She was disappointed. Mrs. Grey opened the French window and led her solicitor into the garden.

"That's a most sensible woman," Mr. Robinson said when they had seated themselves outside; "she has a good head and evidently a good heart; her feeling for you is quite remarkable. You see, Mrs. Grey, the goodness of Providence?--friends raised up for the friendless. We are all apt to overlook our mercies and over-estimate our trials. You don't agree? Ah! one day I trust you will come round to my opinion. But to business. Will you be kind enough to tell me what you wish me to do in this matter?"

"I thought I had explained it already, Mr. Robinson." Mrs. Grey looked tired and spoke with a certain languor. "I do not wish to dispute my husband's will. If it is his desire to remove my daughter from my care altogether, I submit. I wish simply to communicate with him on my own account, and for this reason I want you to find out his address for me. It cannot surely be a very difficult matter. These affairs, I know, are sometimes expensive. I desire that no expense shall be spared. Let any capital I may still possess be sold out and used. I believe I have this power. I have some jewelry too; I had wished to keep it, but that desire has gone entirely." She drew off two or three rings, one of diamonds and emeralds apparently very valuable, and placed a casket in his hands, saying as she did so, "Do what is to be done as quickly as possible; there is no time to lose." Her cheek flushed painfully, and she pressed her hand to her side.

Mr. Robinson had taken the jewelry with some empressement. He looked at it curiously: "I shall have these trifles valued on my return, Mrs. Grey. We shall hope to have no occasion for the use of them. Of course these inquiries, especially when time is a matter of such moment, cost something, and capital can scarcely be realized at so short a notice. However, set your mind at rest: everything that lies in human power to accomplish shall be done; the result we must leave to higher hands than ours. And, by the bye, as we _are_ on the subject of business, you will be glad to hear that your debtor the mortgagee--you will remember if you cast your mind back to our last interview--is completely in my power. I shall certainly realize the greater part of the sum lent. Do you follow me, Mrs. Grey?" for Margaret's attention seemed to flag. She had forgotten the mortgage, the debt, the threatened poverty, for her whole force of mind was centred on the one anxiety--to find out her husband, to appeal to his memories of the past, to persuade him at least to see her; and that fainting-fit with the succeeding weakness had frightened her, making her feel that possibly her time on earth might be short.

"Yes," she said absently; "but, Mr. Robinson, tell me how soon you will be likely to hear of Mr. Grey?"

"Impossible to say accurately, my dear lady, and it is quite against my principles to encourage false hope. If I were a doctor, I should frankly tell my patients of their danger, relying on a higher power than mine to temper the wind and prepare the mind of my patient for the shock, though, indeed, if we all lived in a state of preparation, the approach of death would be little or no shock--shuffling off the mortal coil, going home. But to return: I was saying, I think, that I make it a rule never to encourage false hopes. I have lost clients by it, Mrs. Grey; you would really be amazed at the pertinacity of some folks. It is in this way: A man comes to me. 'Shall I succeed if I go to law in this matter?' he asks. If hopeless, I answer candidly, No. Sometimes my client will insist upon my taking up the business. If not against the dictum of my conscience--an article, by the bye, which we lawyers are not supposed to possess--I submit and do my best, leaving the result. Sometimes he will go off to a more unscrupulous practitioner. It matters very little. What, after all, is so much worth having as the answer of a good conscience?"

Mrs. Grey sighed. This torrent of words wearied her beyond measure. "You have not answered my question, Mr. Robinson," she said; "under favorable circumstances how long would such an inquiry take?"

"And who is to guarantee us favorable circumstances?" replied the lawyer, smiling pleasantly. "My dear lady, I must beg you to be patient. We _may_ fail absolutely. Mind you, I do not mean to assert that I apprehend we _shall_ fail. Come! a promise. As soon as ever I receive intelligence of _any_ kind I will transmit it to you by telegraph. Will that satisfy you?"

"I suppose it _should_," she replied sadly, but there was a feeling of dissatisfaction at her heart that belied her words.

She had not quite the same confidence in Mr. Robinson as she had once had.

In the light of that fever of anxiety which consumed her his trite commonplaces, his rapidly-given assurances looked hollow and vague. She felt as if another standing-point were being cut ruthlessly from under her feet, and yet what could she do? She had no friend, no hope in the wide world, but this man.

She looked up at him, fixing on his rather hard face her mournful eyes, in which unshed tears were swimming. "Mr. Robinson," she said, "you are a Christian man. I can trust you; you will do your very best for me."

He answered by a frank smile and a cordial hand-grip: "You are a little upset, Mrs. Grey, or I should be apt to resent the want of confidence which those words imply. Of course you can rely on me. Now good-bye: I must be off to my wife. I left her at the hotel here, close at hand. She came along with me merely for the trip, and is particularly anxious for a drive before her return; but duty first, pleasure afterward, I told her."

"Good-bye," said Mrs. Grey.

She was reassured once more, ready to blame herself for the momentary distrust.

Mr. Robinson went away with a light swinging step and a cheerful smile. He was no villain, at least in his own eyes, for his small villainies were disguised under such pleasing names that he really thought himself a very good man.

"Poor woman!" he said to himself as he walked along, "what an absurd notion! She'll never find that husband of hers; and if she did, where would be the use?"

And all this meant, "I shall take no particular pains to find him, and certainly not yet; it might be awkward."

Thought is strange in its working. There is the surface action, employed on that which holds it for the moment--the book, the work, the occupation; that which flows under, memory of what has just passed, planning for something in the new future; and often, beneath both these, a deeper undercurrent, its existence scarcely acknowledged even to the mind itself.

It was in this undercurrent that James Robinson hid thoughts which would not hear the light, and thus to the world, to his family, and even to himself, he continued to be an upright and strictly honorable man.

It was a dangerous game. Thought has a volcanic tendency. It is apt to force its way upward, to cleave suddenly the superincumbent strata that holds it from the surface.

Many such a man as James Robinson, quiet, respectable and respected, even to all appearance devout, has been astonished by waking up some fine morning and finding himself a villain.