out with pain. Mrs. Florentine, her old maid, stood close by the head of her mistress’s sofa. She stood looking on very grave and steady, without any surprise, as if she knew it all.
For a few minutes Lady Denzil could not speak. And when she did, her words came out with a burst, all at once. ‘Did he tell you?’ she said. ‘I thought you would help me. You have nobody to keep you back; neither husband nor– I said I was sure of you.’
‘Dear Lady Denzil,’ I said, ‘if I can do anything—to the utmost of my strength–’
She held my hand fast, and looked at me as if she would look me through and through. ‘That was what I said—that was what I said!’ she cried; ‘you can do what your heart says; you can bring her back to me; my child, my little child! I never had but a little child—never that I knew!’
‘I will do whatever you tell me,’ I said, trying to soothe her; ‘but oh! don’t wear yourself out. You will be ill if you give way.’
I said this, I suppose, because everybody says it when any one is in trouble. I don’t know any better reason. ‘That’s what I’m always telling my lady, ma’am,’ said Mrs. Florentine; ‘but she pays no heed to me.’
Lady Denzil gave us both a faint little smile. She knew too much not to know how entirely a matter of conventional routine it was that we should say this to her. She made a pause, and then she took my hand once more.
‘I ought to tell you,’ she said—‘it is all true—every word. Florentine knows everything, from the first to the last. I was a poor soldier’s widow, and I was destitute. I was too young to know what I was doing, and I was pretty, they said, and there were men that would have taken advantage of my simplicity. But Sir Thomas was never like that. I married him to buy a livelihood for my child; and he was very good to me. When he married me, I was a forlorn young creature, with nothing to give my helpless baby. I gave up my child, Florentine knows; and yet every day, every year of his life, I’ve followed him in my heart. If he had been living in my sight, I could not have known more of him. What I say is every word true, Florentine will tell you. I want you,’ grasping my hand tightly, ‘to tell everything to him.’
‘To him!’ said I, with a gasp of astonishment, not knowing what she meant.
‘Yes,’ said Lady Denzil, holding my hand fast, ‘to my boy—I want you to see my boy. Tell him there has never been a day I have not followed him in my heart. All his wilfulness I have felt was my fault. I have prayed God on my knees to lay the blame on me. That day when I saw the deserter—I want you to tell him everything. I want you to ask him to give me back the child.’
I gave a cry of astonishment; an exclamation which I could not restrain. ‘Can you expect it?’ I said.
‘Ah, yes, I expect it,’ said Lady Denzil; ‘not that I have any right—I expect it from his heart. Florentine will tell you everything. It is she who has watched over him. We never talked of anything else, she and I; never a day all these forty years but I have figured to myself what my darling was doing; I say my darling,’ she cried as with a sharp pang, with a sudden gush of tears, ‘and he is a man and a soldier, and in prison. Think of that, and think of all I have had to bear!’
I could not make any answer. I could only press her hand with a dumb sympathy. As for Mrs. Florentine, she stood with her eyes cast down, and smoothed the chintz cover with her hand, taking no part by look or word. The story was no surprise to her. She knew everything about it; she was a chief actor in it; she had no need to show any sympathy. The union between her mistress and herself was deeper than that.
‘When he married this woman, I was ready to believe it would be for his good,’ said my lady, when she had recovered herself. ‘I thought it was somehow giving him back what I had taken from him. I sent her presents secretly. He has been very, very wilful; and Sir Thomas was so good to him! He took his mother from him; but he gave him money, education, everything a young man wants. There are many young men,’ said Lady Denzil pathetically, ‘who think but little of their mothers—’ and then she made a pause. ‘There was young Clifford, for example,’ she added, ‘and the rector’s brother who ran away—their mothers broke their hearts, but the boys did not care much. I have suffered in everything he suffered by; but yet if he had been here, perhaps he would not have cared for me.’
‘That is not possible,’ I said, not seeing what she meant.
‘Oh, it is possible, very possible,’ she said. ‘I have seen it times without number. I have tried to take a little comfort from it. If it had been a girl, I would never, never have given her up; but a boy– That was what I thought. I don’t defend myself. Let him be the judge—I want him to be the judge. That woman is a wicked woman; she has disgraced him and left him; she will bring my child up to ruin. Ask him to give me back my poor little child.’
‘I will do what I can,’ I said, faltering. I was pledged; yet how was I to do it? My courage failed me as I sat by her dismayed and received my commission. When she heard the tremulous sound of my voice, she turned round to me and held my hand close in hers once more.
‘You can do everything,’ she said. Her voice had suddenly grown hoarse. She was at such a supreme height of emotion, that the sight of her frightened me. I kissed her; I soothed her; I promised to do whatever she would. And then she became impatient that I should set out. She was not aware of the rain or the storm. She was too much absorbed in her trouble even to hear the furious wail of the wind and the blast of rain against the windows: but had I been in her case she would have done as much for me. Before Florentine followed me with my cloak, I had made up my mind not to lose any more time. It was from her I got all the details: the poor fellow’s name, and where he was, and all about him. He had been very wild, Florentine said. Sir Thomas had done everything for him; but he had not been grateful, and had behaved very badly. His wife was an abandoned woman, wicked and shameless; and he too had taken to evil courses. He had strained Sir Thomas’s patience to the utmost time after time. And then he had enlisted. His regiment was in the Tower, and he was under confinement there for insubordination. Such was the brief story. ‘Many a time I’ve thought, ma’am,’ said Mrs. Florentine, ‘if my lady did but know him as she was a-breaking of her heart for! If he’d been at home he’d have killed her. But all she knows is that he’s her child—to love, and nothing more.’
‘The Tower is a long way from our railway,’ I said; ‘but it does not much matter in a cab.’
‘Law, ma’am, you’re never going to-day?’ said Florentine. But I had no intention of arguing the question with her. I went into the library to Sir Thomas to bid him good-bye. And he too was amazed when I told him. He took my hand as his wife had done, and shook it, and looked pitifully into my face. ‘It is I who ought to go,’ he said. But he knew as well as I did that it was impossible for him to go. He ordered the carriage to come round for me, and brought me wine—some wonderful old wine he had in his cellar, which I knew no difference in from the commonest sherry. But it pleased him, I suppose, to think he had given me his best. And before I went away, he gave me much more information about the unfortunate man I was going to see. ‘He is not bad at heart,’ said Sir Thomas; ‘I don’t think he is bad at heart; but his wife is a wicked woman.’ And when I was going away, he stooped his gray aged countenance over me, and kissed me solemnly on the forehead. When I found myself driving along the wet roads, with the rain sweeping so in the horses’ faces that it was all the half-blinded coachman could do to keep them going against the wind, I was so bewildered by my own position that I felt stupid for the moment. I was going to the Tower to see Sergeant Gray, in confinement for disrespect to his superior officer—going to persuade him to exert himself to take his child from his wife’s custody, and give her to his mother, whom he did not know! I had not even heard how it was that little Mary had been stolen away. I had taken that for granted, in face of the immediate call upon
