Part 45 (1/2)
No shadow came into the blue eyes as she raised them to her mother's face.
”I am as sure of it,” she replied, ”as I am of my own existence.”
”Then,” thought Margaret to herself, ”I am mistaken; all is well between them.”
Madaline did not intend to remain very long with her mother, but it was soothing to the wounded, aching heart to be loved so dearly. Margaret startled her one day, by saying:
”Madaline, now that you are a great lady, and have such influential friends, do you not think you could do something for your father?”
”Something for my father?” repeated the girl, with a shudder. ”What can I do for him?”
A new idea suddenly occurred to Mrs. Dornham. She looked into Lady Arleigh's pale, beautiful face.
”Madaline,” she said, earnestly, ”tell me the whole truth--is your father's misfortune any drawback to you? Tell me the truth; I have a reason for asking you.”
But Lady Arleigh would not pain her mother--her quiet, simple heart had ached bitterly enough. She would not add one pang.
”Tell me, dear,” continued Margaret, earnestly; ”you do not know how important it is for me to understand.”
”My dear mother,” said Lady Arleigh, gently clasping her arms round her mother's neck; ”do not let that idea make you uneasy. All minor lights cease to s.h.i.+ne, you know, in the presence of greater ones. The world bows down to Lord Arleigh; very few, I think, know what his wife's name was. Be quite happy about me, mother. I am sure that no one who has seen me since my marriage knows anything about my father.”
”I shall be quite happy, now that I know that,” she observed.
More than once during that visit Margaret debated within herself whether she would tell Lady Arleigh her story or not; but the same weak fear that had caused her to run away with the child, lest she should lose her now, made her refrain from speaking, lest Madaline, on knowing the truth, should be angry with her and forsake her.
If Mrs. Dornham had known the harm that her silence was doing she would quickly have broken it.
Lady Arleigh returned home, taking her silent sorrow with her. If possible, she was kinder then ever afterward to her mother, sending her constantly baskets of fruit and game--presents of every kind. If it had not been for the memory of her convict husband, Mrs. Dornham would for the first time in her life have been quite happy.
Then it was that Lady Arleigh began slowly to droop, then it was that her desolate life became utterly intolerable--that her sorrow became greater than she could bear. She must have some one near her, she felt--some one with whom she could speak--or she should go mad. She longed for her mother. It was true Margaret Dornham was not an educated woman, but in her way she was refined. She was gentle, tender-hearted, thoughtful, patient, above all, Madaline believed she was her mother--and she had never longed for her mother's love and care as she did now, when health, strength, and life seemed to be failing her.
By good fortune she happened to see in the daily papers that Lord Arleigh was staying at Meurice's Hotel, in Paris. She wrote to him there, and told him that she had a great longing to have her mother with her. She told him that she had desired this for a long time, but that she had refrained[6] from expressing the wish lest it should be displeasing to him.
”Do not scruple to refuse me,” she said, ”if you do not approve. I hardly venture to hope that you will give your consent. If you do, I will thank you for it. If you should think it best to refuse it, I submit humbly as I submit now. Let me add that I would not ask the favor but that my health and strength are failing fast.”
Lord Arleigh mused long and anxiously over this letter. He hardly cared that her mother should go to Dower House; it would perhaps be the means of his unhappy secret becoming known. Nor did he like to refuse Madaline, unhappy, lonely, and ill. Dear Heaven, if he could but go to her himself and comfort her.
Chapter x.x.xVI.
Long and anxiously did Lord Arleigh muse over his wife's letter. What was he to do? If her mother was like the generality of her cla.s.s, then he was quite sure that the secret he had kept would be a secret no longer--there was no doubt of that. She would naturally talk, and the servants would prove the truth of the story, and there would be a terrible _expose_. Yet, lonely and sorrowful as Madaline declared herself to be, how could he refuse her? It was an anxious question for him, and one that caused him much serious thought. Had he known how ill she was he would not have hesitated a moment.
He wrote to Madaline--how the letter was received and cherished no one but herself knew--and told her that he would be in England in a day or two, and would then give her a decided answer. The letter was kind and affectionate; it came to her hungry heart like dew to a thirsty flower.
A sudden idea occurred to Lord Arleigh. He would go to England and find out all about the unfortunate man Dornham. Justice had many victims; it was within the bounds of possibility that the man might have been innocent--might have been unjustly accused. If such--and oh, how he hoped it might be!--should prove to be the case, then Lord Arleigh felt that he could take his wife home. It was the real degradation of the crime that he dreaded so utterly--dreaded more than all that could ever be said about it. He thought to himself more than once that, if by any unexpected means he discovered that Henry Dornham was innocent of the crime attributed to him, he would in that same hour ask Madaline to forgive him, and to be the mistress of his house. That was the only real solution of the difficulty that ever occurred to him. If the man were but innocent he--Lord Arleigh--would never heed the poverty, the obscurity the humble name--all that was nothing. By comparison it seemed so little that he could have smiled at it. People might say it was a low marriage, but he had his own idea of what was low. If only the man could be proved innocent of crime, then he might go to his sweet, innocent wife, and clasping her in his arms, take her to his heart.
The idea seemed to haunt him--it seemed to have a fatal attraction for him. He resolved to go to London at once and see if anything could be done in the matter. How he prayed and longed and hoped! He pa.s.sed through well-nigh every stage of feeling--from the bright rapture of hope to the lowest depths of despair. He went first to Scotland Yard, and had a long interview with the detective who had given evidence against Henry Dornham. The detective's idea was that he was emphatically ”a bad lot.”
He smiled benignly when Lord Arleigh suggested that possibly the man was innocent, remarking that it was very kind of the gentleman to think so; for his own part he did not see a shadow of a chance of it.