Volume Iii Part 34 (1/2)

Even Mr. Stevens, as he looked on the terrible signs of suffering on the haggard and miserable face before him, was conscious of a far softer and more forgiving spirit.

Christie came at once and stood near the door, a triumphant expression upon her features.

Still keeping his hand so, partly screening his face, Mr. Sandford began to speak in a low clear distinct voice, without inflections or emphasis--a voice that seemed hardly to belong to him.

”Anne, I have wronged you most. I must speak to you, and the others must hear.

”You have sometimes, in old days ... you used often to ask me who my father's first wife was--you remember? Who my mother was?”

”I remember.”

”My father, our father, was only married once, Anne, and your mother was the only wife he ever had.”

There was a breathless silence--Mrs. Dorriman not fully understanding the purport of his words.

”Therefore,” continued Mr. Sandford in a hard tone, speaking almost as one under the influence of some powerful narcotic, ”I have no rights, no name. I am not the heir, I never was the master of Sandford!”

”But you are my father's son?” exclaimed Mrs. Dorriman in a tone of intense suspense.

”I am--but, Anne, I am his nameless son. He never married my mother. Now do you understand?”

Mrs. Dorriman turned to Mr. Stevens, her face pale, she was trembling.

She was evidently intensely surprised. He took her hand in his and spoke to her, in a low voice, rea.s.suring words.

”Before you all judge me, hear me!” continued the unhappy man, ”for my temptation was great and my trial a terrible one!

”As the only son--brought up unchecked and with power in my hands--it was not till I was nearly twenty-five, madly in love with my wife, that my father told me the truth.

”My G.o.d! how I suffered! My father always intended to tell me but he dreaded a scene and put it off always. I think _she_ knew, and I was afraid of her!”--he indicated Christie with his hand.

”Do you think that if I had known I would have stood by and seen ill done till her?” and Christie's wrinkled old face glowed with pa.s.sion. ”I had no proof, but I thought my own thoughts. Your mother was a neighbour on the hill-side and she went away; she came back with her bairn at her breast and never a wedding-ring, and she greeted and greeted. A happy wife is proud of her man, she never spoke of hers, she just dwined and died; and your father, a young young man, came home and saw her on her death-bed. 'I'll care for the bairn,' he kept saying in my hearing, and you was moved to the big house. He grieved, for he was kind-hearted enough--but weak, weak as a bracken-bough.” Christie stopped short, and a dead silence reigned in the room.

”When I went to my father and told him that I loved Margaret Rivers (and Heaven knows how I loved her!) he answered that I _must_ have known this. The facts had been so impressed on his own mind that he imagined I _must_ somehow have known them.

”Day after day I renewed my prayers--only to be refused. The strain upon him, the incessant agitation, all acted unfavourably upon him, and the last violent scene we had together ended in his having a paralytic shock, so severe that he lost all power of speech. The terror and misery of it all I still remember, then suddenly it came before me that, as no one knew this dread secret, I might take possession. I spent hours looking through his papers, but I found no proof against me.

”Colonel Rivers had gone to India with his daughters. I followed him there, and married the only woman I ever loved, only to lose her a short time afterwards. I went about nearly mad. I threw up the appointment in a merchant's house I had, and I came back. My father had grown feebler, but at times I was afraid he might rally sufficiently to tell you, Anne, about it. For this reason I sent you from home, and, as we always hate where we have injured, I hated you, and hurried your marriage to get you safe and away from my sight--you were a perpetual reproach to me.

”Then one day your husband found some papers. He was embarra.s.sed and hampered, and I lent him money. He was not a good man of business, and I found it easy to lead him to do what I thought best--but it was equally easy for the next comer to make him do exactly the reverse. In all his difficulties his ruling wish was to put you beyond the reach of adversity, to make you independent. But he only succeeded partly. When he found those papers he came to me and said he had found some curious letters. They were letters from my father to my mother, and, had he read them, he would have known all; but he was an honourable fellow, and, having accidentally seen one and been amused by the spelling, he did not read any more. I was afraid of being too eager, and, before he could give them, he was taken ill and died, and you have those letters now, Anne; they are in that box some instinct, I suppose, made you keep.”

He lay back now exhausted--nothing save Mr. Stevens's sustaining hand had kept Mrs. Dorriman quiet. She was fearfully agitated: the cruel wrongs heaped upon her, the long years of a dependence which had galled her so terribly--everything came before her. Mr. Stevens, pa.s.sing his arm round her, took her out of the room; he saw she could bear no more, she was overwrought.

”Mr. Sandford opened his eyes, and saw her going.

”Ah!” he said, bitterly, ”at last I have driven her from my side, even her patient spirit is at length roused. Margaret.”

”Yes,” she answered, in a constrained voice.

”You are condemning me also.”

She could not speak.