Mrs. Dorriman Volume Iii Part 34

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.

The times without number that she had seen him violent and abusive to poor Mrs. Dorriman, the cruel sting that being at his mercy had always been to the poor woman, the imposture, everything bewildered and shocked her.

Mr. Stevens went back, Christie still leaned against the door like a statue.

"How your fraud was successful, I cannot understand," he said, curtly.

"Who was there to ask any questions? Who was to know what had pa.s.sed?"

asked Mr. Sandford; "I had nothing to prove. The result of my father's deception was to make all easy. As I had lived with him, been accepted as his legitimate son during his lifetime, during the time when he might have spoken, why should I not be accepted as his legitimate son when speech was denied him? There were no papers to prove or disprove anything, I was asked to produce no baptismal certificate, and no one thought of questioning me about my mother's marriage certificate.

"But now you know all, take what steps you like to proclaim me to the world an impostor--what signifies it to me? No one can deny me the six feet of earth which is all I shall want directly."

"Sir," said Christie, "when you sold the place was it for fear of a judgment if you lived in it?"

"Sold the place! How could I live in the place to be reminded at every turn that it was not really mine? Every tree, every shrub, seemed to be a witness against me. I grew to loathe the place."

"And what made you think I knew anything?"

"Because your father was so much with mine," he answered slowly; "I never was sure, but I sometimes fancied he knew something."

"He knew nothing, but he did guess; he said, when you sold the place, it was strange, that a man that was well-to-do would not sell a family-place without a strong reason.... But my father was right in what he said," she exclaimed, her eyes becoming brilliant as she saw the fulfilment of his prophecy coming nearer and nearer; "he said you would have your own, my dear, and you have it now!"

She spoke as though Mrs. Dorriman were still present.

Margaret saw that Mr. Sandford was almost past consciousness, and she hurried them away leaving him alone with the doctor, whom she summoned.

Mrs. Dorriman, who for so long now had been kept out of her rights, was quite overwhelmed by this sudden reversion of all her accustomed conclusions; all the long years of her dependence had so nearly crushed her spirit that it was difficult for her mind to grasp her present position. Mr. Stevens was full of patience.

"And the place is sold!" she said, with a sudden sense of not being able to have it, in spite of all.

"I think we can get the man who bought it to give it up," said Mr.

Stevens; "we will try at any rate."

She was crying bitterly; she remembered her father's gentle indecision, even about trifles, and indeed her youth would have been far, far happier had he only been able to stand against his son's overbearing temper; but the knowledge of the wrong he had done him made him give in to him. He had been a man who hated anything that disturbed his tranquillity, and only when obliged and forced to do so had he told his son the truth. The effect of this blow was terrible. To have been allowed to grow up looking upon his position as certain, and, just when he was most anxious to have a fair future to offer to the Margaret Rivers he wors.h.i.+pped, to have everything swept away from under his feet, nearly turned his brain.

Mrs. Dorriman could not see her brother at any rate then, and Mr.

Stevens did not press her to do so. He knew that the doctor did not think there was any immediate danger, he was to escort her to Inchbrae, fully understanding that she had received too great a shock to recover from immediately.

When she asked Margaret to return with her, as a matter of course, she was surprised, almost hurt, by her refusal.

"I feel that you have happiness in prospect, auntie darling," Margaret answered; "but this most unhappy man! Oh, do not look so grieved! I must do what I feel right. I cannot leave him to face this remorse, and all alone."

"I cannot think of him! I could not see him!" said poor Mrs. Dorriman, with a vehemence utterly foreign to her nature. "Oh, Margaret, if you knew all I suffered in old days!" she stopped, with a sudden sob.

"Do not think that I do not sympathise with you fully and entirely; it is a terrible position; he has injured you, and it has been most cruel; but, auntie, do not let him do you further injury, for there is a further injury that this may do you, a greater wrong!"

Mrs. Dorriman hurriedly swept away her tears that were blinding her, and gazed at Margaret with blank astonishment.