Chapter 8

My suspicion, from that time, I felt was a truth. I knew that there were characters so complex that no human being could understand them. Here was a beautiful surface--Heaven only knew what lay underneath. There was no outward brand of murder on the white brow, or red stain on the soft, white hand. But day by day the certainty grew in my mind. Another thing struck me very much. We were sitting one day quite alone on the grass near a pretty little pool of water, called "Dutton Pool." In some parts it was very shallow, in some very deep. Lance had gone somewhere on business, and had left us to entertain each other. I had often noticed that one of Mrs. Fleming's favorite ornaments was a golden locket with one fine diamond in the center; she wore it suspended by a small chain from her neck. As she sat talking to me she was playing with the chain, when it suddenly became unfastened and the locket fell from it. In less than a second it was hidden in the long grass. She looked for it in silence for some minutes, then she said, gently:

"I have dropped my locket, Mr. Ford; is it near you? I cannot find it."

"Is it one you prize very much?" I asked.

"I should not like to lose it," she replied, and her face paled as searching in the long grass she saw nothing of it.

I found it in a few minutes, but it was lying open; the fall had loosened the spring. I could not help seeing the contents as I gave it to her--a round ring of pale golden hair.

"A baby's curl?" I said, as I returned it to her.

Her whole face went blood-red in one minute.

"The only thing I have belonging to my little sister," she said. "She died when I was a child."

"You must prize it," I said; but I could not keep the dryness of suspicion from my voice.

"Mrs. Fleming," I asked, suddenly, "are you like Lance and myself, without relations?"

"Almost," she replied, briefly.

"Strange that three people should be almost alone in the world but for each other!" I said.

"I was left an orphan when I was four years old," she said. "Only Heaven knows how I have cried out upon my parents for leaving me. I never had one happy hour. Can you imagine a whole childhood passed without one happy hour?"

"Hardly," I said.

With white, nervous fingers she fastened the gold chain round her neck again.

"Not one happy hour," she said. "I was left under the care of my grandmother, a proud, cold, cruel woman, who never said a kind word to me, and who grudged me every slice of bread and butter I ate."

She looked at me, still holding the golden locket in her white fingers.

"If I had been like other girls," she said "if I had parents to love me, brothers and sisters, friends or relatives, I should have been different. Believe me, Mr. Ford, there are white slaves in England whose slavery is worse than that of an African child. I was one of them. I think of my youth with a sick shudder; I think of my childhood with horror, and I almost thank Heaven that the tyrant is dead who blighted my life."

Now the real woman was breaking through the mask; her face flushed; her eyes shone.

"I often talk to Lance about it," she said, "this terrible childhood of mine. I was punished for the least offence. I never heard a word of pity or affection. I never saw a look of anything but hate on my grandmother's face. No one was ever pitiful to me; fierce words, fierce blows, complaints of the burden I was; that was all my mother's mother ever gave to me. I need not say that I hated her, and learned to loathe the life I fain would have laid down. Do I tire you, Mr. Ford?"

"On the contrary, I am deeply interested," I replied.

She went on:

"My grandmother was not poor; she was greedy. She had a good income which died with her, and she strongly objected to spend it on me. She paid for my education on the condition that when I could get my own living by teaching I should repay her. Thank Heaven, I did so!"

"Then you were a governess?" I said.

"Yes; I began to get my own living at fifteen. I was tall for my age, and quite capable," she said; "but fifteen is very young, Mr. Ford, for a girl to be thrown on to the world."

"You must have been a very beautiful girl," I said.

"Yes, so much the worse for me." She seemed to repent of the words as soon as they were uttered.

"I mean," she added, quickly, "that my grandmother hated me the more for it."

There was silence between us for some minutes, then she added:

"You may imagine, after such an unloved life, how I love Lance."

"He is the best fellow in the world," I said, "and the woman who could deceive him ought to be shot."

"What woman would deceive him?" she asked. "Indeed, for matter of that, what woman could? I am his wife!"

"It happens very often," I said, trying to speak carelessly, "that good and loyal men like Lance are the most easily deceived."

"It should not be so," she said. She was startled again, I saw it in her face.

That same afternoon we drove into Vale Royal. Mrs. Fleming had several poor people whom she wished to see, and some shopping to do.

"You should take your locket to a jeweler's," I said, "and have the spring secured."

"What locket is that?" asked Lance, looking up eagerly from his paper.

"Mine," she replied--"this." She held it out for his inspection. "I nearly lost it this morning," she said; "it fell from my neck."

"Is it the one that holds your sister's hair?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied, opening it and holding it out for him to see.

What nerve she had, if this was what I imagined, the hair of the little dead child. Loving Lance rose from his chair and kissed her.

"You would not like to lose that, my darling, would you?" he said, "Excepting me, that is all you have in the world."

They seemed to forget all about me; she clung to him, and he kissed her face until I thought he would never give over.

"How lovely you were when I found you, Frances," he said. "Do you remember the evening--you were bending over the crysanthemums?"

"I shall forget my own life and my own soul before I forget that," she replied.

And I said to myself: "Even if my suspicion be perfectly true, have I any right to mar such love as that?" I noticed that during all the conversation about the locket, she never once looked at me.

We went to Vale Royal, and there never was man so bewildered as I. Lance proposed that we should go visiting with Mrs. Fleming.

"Get your purse ready, John," he said--"this visit will require a small fortune."

"I find the poor value kind words as much as money," said the beautiful woman.

"Then they must be very disinterested," he said, laughingly--"I should prefer money."

"You are only jesting," she said.

It was a pretty sight to see her go into those poor, little, dirty houses. There was no pride, no patronage, no condescension--she was simply sweetly natural; she listened to their complaints, gave them comfort and relieved their wants. As I watched her I could not help thinking to myself that if I were a fashionable or titled lady, this would be my favorite relaxation--visiting and relieving the poor. I never saw so much happiness purchased by a few pounds. We came to a little cottage that stood by itself in a garden.

"Are you growing tired?" she asked of her husband.

"I never tire with you," he replied.

"And you, Mr. Ford?" she said.

She never overlooked or forgot me, but studied my comfort on every occasion. I could have told her that I was watching what was to me a perfect problem--the kindly, gentle, pitying deeds of a woman, who had, I believed, murdered her own child.

"I am not tired, Mrs. Fleming, I am interested," I said.

The little cottage which stood in the midst of a wild patch of garden was inhabited by a day-laborer. He was away at work; his wife sat at home nursing a little babe, a small, fair, tiny child, evidently not more than three weeks old, dying, too, if one could judge from the face.

She bent over it--the beautiful, graceful woman who was Lance's wife. Ah, Heaven! the change that came over her, the passion of mother love that came into her face; she was transformed.

"Let me hold the little one for you," she said, "while you rest for a few minutes;" and the poor, young mother gratefully accepted the offer.

What a picture she made in the gloomy room of the little cottage, her beautiful face and shining hair, her dress sweeping the ground, and the tiny child lying in her arms.

"Does it suffer much?" she asked, in her sweet, compassionate voice.

"It did, ma'am," replied the mother, "but I have given it something to keep it quiet."

"Do you mean to say that you have drugged it?" asked Mrs. Fleming.

"Only a little cordial, ma'am, nothing more; it keeps it sleeping; and when it sleeps it does not suffer."

She shook her beautiful head.

"It is a bad practice," she said; "more babes are killed by drugs than die a natural death."

I was determined she should look at me; I stepped forward and touched the child's face.

"Do you not think it is merciful at times to give a child like this drugs when it has to die; to lessen the pain of death--to keep it from crying out?"

Ah, me, that startled fear that leaped into her eyes, the sudden quiver on the beautiful face.

"I do not know," she said; "I do not understand such things."

"What can it matter," I said, "whether a little child like this dies conscious or not? It cannot pray--it must go straight to Heaven! Do you not think anyone who loved it, and had to see it die, would think it greatest kindness to drug it?"

My eyes held hers; I would not lose their glance; she could not take them away. I saw the fear leap into them, then die away; she was saying to herself, what could I know?

But I knew. I remembered what the doctor said in Brighton when the inquest was held on the tiny white body, "that it had been mercifully drugged before it was drowned."

"I cannot tell," she replied, with a gentle shake of the head. "I only know that unfortunately the poor people use these kind of cordials too readily. I should not like to decide whether in a case like this it is true kindness or not."

"What a pretty child, Mr. Ford; what a pity that it must die!"

Could it be that she who bent with such loving care over this little stranger, who touched its tiny face with her delicate lips, who held it cradled in her soft arms, was the same desperate woman who had thrown her child into the sea?