CHAPTER XXV.

A REVELATION.

No sooner was Rose in London than she made her way to the hospital indicated in the anonymous note which had been the cause of her and her husband’s unwelcome return to town.

She had never been inside a hospital before. There was something bewildering in its vastness and its antiquity. Close by ran swift the current of City life, ever turbid and boisterous. In there all was calm and still. The one thought that brightened and hallowed the spot was the life that had been saved, especially among the poor, to whom our great hospitals are indeed a blessing and a boon.

‘I want to see a patient in the women’s ward,’ said Rose to the porter, as she alighted at the entrance.

The porter expressed his fear that she had come in vain, unless she had a better clue to identification.

In his despair he sent the lady in the direction of the women’s ward, and there her difficulties began anew. There were many poor suffering ones in the women’s wards. How could they tell where was the one she sought? As she was waiting, one of the staff came downstairs.

‘Good heavens!’ he exclaimed; ‘Miss Howard, how came you here?’

He knew the actress, and at once rushed to rescue her from the dilemma.

Rose had little to go by. The note had been sent from Sloville. It was clear that someone connected with Sloville was lying ill—perhaps dying—there. Under the guidance of one of the nurses she went softly from one bed to another. One nurse after another was appealed to. At length one was found who had the charge of a case in one of the wards. Her patient had at times spoken of the town in question; but she was ill, very ill, and the nurse was afraid any excitement might be fatal. When the medical man in charge of the case was consulted he shook his head despairingly. The thread of life was nearly worn out. A woman from Sloville had been there to see her, and the little talk between the two had considerably increased the patient’s danger. Originally the woman in question had been run over by a cab outside one of the theatres. Her constitution was entirely gone, and the injuries inflicted on the system had been serious. After three months’ nursing she had been sufficiently healed to leave the hospital, and had led a more or less wandering life. Then she had gone down hop-picking in Kent; had caught cold; that cold had settled on her lungs. There was no earthly hope for her, and there she lay, wrestling not for dear life, but with grim death. But there was no immediate danger. Good nursing and tender care might lengthen her days for a short season.

‘If Miss Howard would return to-morrow, the doctor would try and get her into a proper state for a little talk.’

‘I would rather see her now,’ said the lady.

‘Impossible, madam; quite impossible, madam,’ said the medico, and Rose had reluctantly to retire.

‘Surely I have enough on hand,’ said she to herself, ‘if all the note hints is true. People said when I left the stage I should find life tame and dull. I have not found it so at present. I believe no life is tame and dull if one is determined to make the most of it. After she had left the stage, Mrs. Siddons, from the want of excitement, was never happy. I am not a Mrs. Siddons, happily,’ said the retired actress to herself.

The morning came, and Rose was again at the hospital. The medical man was there to meet her, and they went together to the patient’s bedside. In that emaciated face, purified by disease from its former grossness, few would have recognised ‘our Sally.’

We are a merciful people. Let our tramps live as they may, we take good care of them in our hospitals.

‘Father never gives beggars anything,’ said a little boy to one of the fraternity in a small country town; ‘but he always prays for them.’

We may show a stern face to the tramp; but once inside a hospital we give him something more than prayers—proper food, trained nursing, the best science that can be procured for love or money. Comforts, nay, luxuries, he could never procure for himself. Indeed, in all desirable respects, he is as well off as a millionaire.

But to return to our Sally, lying there calmly in her clean bed, in a long and lofty ward, apparently indifferent to all external things, simply satisfied with life such as it was.

‘A lady has come to see you,’ said the doctor, in his pleasant tones, ‘A lady from Sloville.’

‘Take her away. I am that bad I can’t speak to her.’

‘Are you quite sure you don’t want to see her? She says you sent her a letter to come.’

‘No, it warn’t me. It was that Sloville woman as was here last week. I told her not to bother, and now she’s gone and done it.’

A fit of coughing came, and conversation ceased.

Then the nurse administered a little stimulus, and that revived her.

‘Leave us alone,’ said the poor woman.

The others withdrew, and Rose stepped forward.

‘You’ve been good to my boy,’ said the patient slowly, as if it were hard to talk.

‘What do you mean? The boy I took from Sloville?’

‘Yes.’

‘But someone has written to me to say that he is the heir of Sir Watkin Strahan.’

‘Yes, he is. I stole him.’

‘Stole him! Why, how could you do such a thing?’ asked the actress excitedly.

‘For revenge!’ exclaimed the poor woman, with all the energy she could collect, and then fell back exhausted. For a time both were silent, and Rose watched with pity the face, stained by intemperance and sensuality and all evil living, wondering what could be the connection between that poor pauper in the hospital and the proud deceased Baronet.

‘Read this paper,’ said the poor woman.

‘Oct. 187-. Saw my pore boy on a brogham at the theatre. I knowed him at once. His father is Sir Watkin Strahan, and he was on the box of Miss Howard’s brogham. I lost him as I was going to speak to him. The peeler told me to be off.’

‘Then, it was you that left him at Sloville, where I took him up?’

‘Yes,’ said the poor woman feebly, adding: ‘Come nearer.’

Rose complied with the request.

‘I was an underservant in Sir Watkin’s house. He was a wicked man. He took a fancy to me. I war young and good-looking, and a fool.’

The old, old story, thought Rose to herself, for the poor woman gave her plenty of time to think, so slowly and feebly did the words come out of her mouth.

‘One day the missus came and caught me in his room. I was turned out into the street, without a character and without a friend. I vowed I’d be even with him, and I run off with his boy.’

‘How could you manage that?’

‘Oh, that was easy enough. The nursemaid was allus a talking to the sodgers in the park. And an Italian Countess helped me. She had an idea that if she could get rid of the child and the wife she would marry the master.’

‘But was no effort made to get the child back?’

‘Oh yes! But I managed to get a dead baby, the very moral of his’n. An Italian lady staying in the house helped me. I dressed it in his clothes. The master thought it his own, and had it buried in the family vault.’

‘That was very wrong of you.’

‘Perhaps it was. But had not the master and missus both wronged me? Arter that I got married, but me and my husband were always quarrelling about the boy, and that made me take to drink, and then, when I lost my husband, I drank worse and worse.’

‘And then you went on the tramp, and left the boy at Sloville, and I took him.’

‘Yes.’

‘He is a good boy.’

‘He allus was.’

‘But why did you not see him righted?’

‘I did one day. I had a letter sent to Sir Watkin, and he sent me word it was all a lie, that his boy was dead. Then his lady died, and he went abroad, and—’

‘And you never saw him again?’

‘Only twice. When I saw him outside your theater and tried to speak to him. But he pushed me into the street, and then I met with my accident. He’s a hard un and a bad un.’

‘And when again?’

‘Not very long ago; when they had the election at Sloville. I was there and he too, but he would not look at me. Oh, he was harder than ever!’

‘Speak not of him now—he’s dead.’

‘Dead! Oh, dear!’ said the woman. ‘Do you mean to say he’s really dead?’

‘Yes,’ said the actress, ‘he died only a few days since.’

‘And I am dying—oh, dear! What a wicked woman I’ve been! What mischief I’ve done!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why, I meant to restore the boy.’

‘It is too late—the boy has no father now. Is this truth you tell me? It is a strange story.’

‘The truth, so help me God.’

Then she sank back utterly overcome. At length she said:

‘I’ve not long to live, have I?’

‘I fear not.’

‘You’ll see me buried decent?’

‘Yes, I will.’

‘And you’ll be kind to the boy and see that he has his rights?’

‘If I can.’

‘That makes me feel better.’

‘I am glad of that.’

‘You are kind.’

‘How can I be otherwise? You’re but a woman, and I am no more.’

‘They’re all kind here,’ said the woman, sobbing.

‘It is because they love God.’

‘Ah, so the parson says. Sir Watkin used to tell me the parson told lies.’

‘And you believed him?’

‘Yes—I don’t now.’

‘God is our Father, and He loves us all.’

‘What, me?’

‘Yes, you.’

‘What, me, with all my wickedness?’

‘Yes, you and I, with all our guilt and sin. His heart pants with tenderness for all. He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that he should turn to Him and live. He sent Jesus Christ, His Son, to save us.’

‘Do you believe that?’

‘Yes, with all my heart. I should be wretched indeed if I did not. Daily my prayer is, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.’”

‘Ah, I like to hear you talk. I’ve not heerd such talk since I was a gal, and then I did not believe it. But it does me good now.’

‘Yes, but I must not talk any longer, or you will be excited and get worse. Try and have a little sleep, and I will go home and pray for you.’

‘Thanks, miss,’ said the woman gratefully; ‘you’ll come and see me to-morrow?’

‘Yes, I will,’ said Rose, as she turned to go home.

But that to-morrow never came. At midnight the summons came, and all that was left of ‘our Sally’ was a silent form of clay.

Some of us go out of the world one way and some another.

Happy they who can exclaim, with Cicero, ‘O preclarum diem,’ or with Paul, ‘I know in whom I have believed;’ or with Job, ‘Though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.’

Unhappy those who with dim eye, as it restlessly sweeps the horizon of the future, can see no beacon to a haven of light, no pole-star pointing to a land of eternal rest—

‘No God, no heaven, no earth in the void world— The wide, gray, lawless, deep, unpeopled world.’

Rose rushed home as rapidly as the cab she hired could carry her. Wentworth was in.

‘What am I to do?’ she said, as she told him the whole story.

‘Better send for the boy,’ he said.

‘Oh no, not yet. He is comfortable where he is, learning to be a sailor. He’s fond of the sea, and it will be a pity to take him from it.’

The fact is, the young waif, as Rose thought him, was placed, at her expense, on board one of the training-ships lying off Greenhithe. They are noble institutions, these training-ships—saving lads who, if left to themselves, might become tempted by circumstances or bad companions into crime, and at the same time supplying us with what we English emphatically require at the present day—English sailors on whom captains can rely on board our merchant ships and men-of-war. There was no difficulty in getting the actress’s _protégé_ there, and there he was rapidly training into a good sailor and a fine fellow, well-built, obedient to his superiors, handy, and hardy, and sturdy, morally and physically, as all sailors should be.

The next thing was to talk to a lawyer. In this wicked world lawyers are necessary evils. Sometimes, however, they do a great deal of good. The lawyer recommended Wentworth to call on the family lawyer of the deceased Baronet. He came back looking unhappy and uncomfortable, as people often do when they have interviews with lawyers who are supposed to be on the other side. He found him in comfortable quarters on a first floor in Bedford Row, Holborn, looking the very image of respectability—bald, and in black, with an appearance partly suggestive of the fine old clergyman of the port-wine school, with a touch of the thorough man of the world; a lawyer, in short, who would give an air of plausibility and rectitude to any cause in which he was embarked.

To him Wentworth apologized for making an intrusion.

‘No apology at all was needed, my dear sir. Happy to make your acquaintance. I have not only read your books—very clever, too, Mr. Wentworth—but I heard of you more than once through Sir Watkin Strahan.’

‘Perhaps in no complimentary terms?’

‘Well, you know the late Baronet was a man of strong passions, and, when annoyed, I must admit that his language was what we might call a little unparliamentary.’

‘It is about his business I have called. You are aware there is an heir?’

‘Oh yes; Colonel Strahan, the brother.’

‘I don’t mean him. A son.’

‘A son! Impossible. The deceased baronet had only one son, and the fine fellow—’

‘Is now alive.’

‘Nonsense, my dear sir. He was buried in the family vault, after the doctor and the family were satisfied of his identity, and I was present at the funeral. There was a coroner’s inquest held in order to leave no room for doubt.’

‘I think not,’ said Wentworth, as he proceeded to unfold the details of his case, to which the lawyer listened at first with a severely judicial air, and then with an incredulous smile.

‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’ he asked, when Wentworth had finished his statement.

‘Pretty much so,’ replied Wentworth.

‘Then,’ replied the lawyer, with a triumphant air, ‘we have little to fear. Sergeant B.’—naming a popular advocate of the day—‘would laugh the case out of court in a quarter of an hour. You have a quarrel with the deceased. Your good lady has—to put it not too strongly—been insulted and shamefully ill-treated by him. Who would believe that, in promoting this suit—should you be so ill-advised as to do that—you came into court with clean hands? The idea is perfectly preposterous.’

The worst of it was that Wentworth, as he withdrew, was compelled to own that there was not a little truth in what the lawyer had said.

It was not law but equity that was required in his particular case. In England law and equity, alas! have often different meanings.