Wife in Name Only, Charlotte Mary Brame [carter reed txt] 📗

gold; her eyes were of the deep blue that one sees in summer. It was not only her great loveliness, but there was about her a wonderful charm, a fascination, that no one could resist.

Dr. Letsom loved the child. She sat on his knee and talked to him, until the whole face of the earth seemed changed to him. Besides his great love for the little Madaline, he became interested in the story of Margaret Dornham's life--in her love for the handsome, reckless ne'er-do-well who had given up work as a failure--in her wonderful patience, for she never complained--in her sublime heroism, for she bore all as a martyr. He heard how Henry Dornham was often seen intoxicated--heard that he was abusive, violent. He went afterward to the cottage, and saw bruises on his wife's delicate arms and hands--dark cruel marks on her face; but by neither word nor look did she ever betray her husband. Watching that silent, heroic life, he became interested in her. More than once he tried to speak to her about her husband--to see if anything could be done to reclaim him. She knew that all efforts were in vain--there was no good in him; still more she knew now that there never had been such good as she had hoped and believed. Another thing pleased and interested the doctor--it was Margaret Dornham's passionate love for her foster child. All the love that she would have lavished on her husband, all the love that she would have given to her own child, all the repressed affection and buried tenderness of heart were given to this little one. It was touching pitiful, sad, to see how she worshiped her.

"What shall I do when the three years are over, and her father comes to claim her?" she would say to the doctor. "I shall never be able to part with her. Sometimes I think I shall run away with her and hide her."

How little she dreamed that there was a prophecy in the words!

"Her father has the first claim," said Dr. Letsom. "It may be hard for us to lose her, but she belongs to him."

"He will never love her as I do," observed Margaret Dornham.

Of the real rank and position of that father she had not the faintest suspicion. He had money, she knew; but that was all she knew--and money to a woman whose heart hungers for love seems very little.

"There is something almost terrible in the love of that woman for that child," thought the doctor. "She is good, earnest, tender, true, by nature; but she is capable of anything for the little one's sake."

So the two years and a half passed, and the child, with her delicate, marvelous grace, had become the very light of those two lonely lives. In another six months they would have to lose her. Dr. Letsom knew very well that if the earl were still living at the end of the three years his son would tell him of his marriage.

On a bright, sunshiny day in June the doctor walked over to Ashwood. He had a little packet of fruit and cakes with him, and a wonderful doll, dressed most royally.

"Madaline!" he cried, as he entered the cottage, and she came running to him, "should you like a drive with me to-morrow?" he asked. "I am going to Corfell, and I will promise to take you if you will be a good girl."

She promised--for a drive with the doctor was her greatest earthly delight.

"Bring her to my house about three to-morrow afternoon, Mrs. Dornham," said Dr. Letsom, "and she shall have her drive."

Margaret promised. When the time came she took the little one, dressed in her pretty white frock; and as they sat in the drawing-room, the doctor was brought home to his house--dead.

It was such a simple yet terrible accident that had killed him. A poor man had been injured by a kick from a horse. For want of better accommodation, he had been carried up into a loft over a stable, where the doctor attended him. In the loft was an open trap-door, through which trusses of hay and straw were raised and lowered. No one warned Dr. Letsom about it. The aperture was covered with straw, and he, walking quickly across, fell through. There was but one comfort--he did not suffer long. His death was instantaneous; and on the bright June afternoon when he was to have taken little Madaline for a drive, he was carried home, through the sunlit streets, dead.

Margaret Dornham and the little child sat waiting for him when the sad procession stopped at the door.

"The doctor is dead!" was the cry from one to another.

A terrible pain shot through Margaret's head. Dead! The kindly man, who had been her only friend, dead! Then perhaps the child would be taken from her, and she should see it no more!

An impulse, for which she could hardly account, and for which she was hardly responsible, seized her. She must have the box that contained the papers, lest, finding the papers, people should rob her of the child. Quick as thought, she seized the box--which always stood on a bracket in the drawing-room--and hid it under her shawl. To the end of her life she was puzzled as to why she had done this. It would not be missed, she knew, in the confusion that was likely to ensue. She felt sure, also, that no one, save herself and the child's father, knew of its contents.

She did not wait long in that scene of confusion and sorrow. Clasping the child in her arms, lest she should see the dead face, Margaret Dornham hurried back to the cottage, bearing with her the proofs of the child's identity.

The doctor was buried, and with him all trace of the child seemed lost. Careful search was made in his house for any letters that might concern her, that might give her father's address; but Stephen Letsom had been faithful to his promise--he had kept the secret. There was nothing that could give the least clew. There were no letters, no memoranda; and, after a time, people came to the conclusion that it would be better to let the child remain where she was, for her father would be sure in time to hear of the doctor's death and to claim her.

So September came, with its glory of autumn leaves. Just three years had elapsed since Lady Charlewood had died; and then the great trouble of her life came to Margaret Dornham.


Chapter V.


On the day after Dr. Letsom's death, Margaret Dornham's husband was apprehended on a charge of poaching and aiding in a dangerous assault on Lord Turton's gamekeepers. Bail was refused for him, but at the trial he was acquitted for want of evidence. Every one knew he was guilty. He made no great effort to conceal it. But he defied the whole legal power of England to prove him guilty. He employed clever counsel, and the result was his acquittal. He was free; but the prison brand was on him, and his wife felt that she could not endure the disgrace.

"I shall go from bad to worse now, Maggie," he said to her. "I do not find prison so bad, nor yet difficult to bear; if ever I Bee by any lucky hit I can make myself a rich man, I shall not mind a few years in jail as the price. A forgery, or something of that kind, or the robbery of a well-stocked bank, will be henceforward my highest aim in life."

She placed her hand on his lips and prayed him for Heaven's sake to be silent. He only laughed.

"Nature never intended me to work--she did not indeed, Maggie. My fellow-men must keep me; they keep others far less deserving."

From that moment she knew no peace or rest. He would keep his word; he would look upon crime as a source of profit; he would watch his opportunity of wrong-doing, and seize it When it came.

In the anguish of her heart she cried aloud that it must not be at Ash wood; anywhere else, in any other spot, but not there, where she had been known in the pride of her fair young life--not there, where people had warned her not to marry the handsome reckless, ne'er-do-well, and had prophesied such terrible evil for her if she did marry him--not there, where earth was so fair, where all nature told of innocence and purity. If he must sin, let it be far away in large cities where the ways of men were evil.

She decided on leaving Ashwood. Another and perhaps even stronger motive that influenced her was her passionate love for the child; that was her one hope in life, her one sheet-anchor, the one thing that preserved her from the utter madness of desolation.

The three years had almost elapsed; the doctor was dead, and had left nothing behind him that could give any clew to Madaline's identity, and in a short time--she trembled to think how short--the father would come to claim his child, and she would lose her. When she thought of that, Margaret Dornham clung to the little one in a passion of despair. She would go away and take Madaline with her--keep her where she could love her--where she could bring her up as her own child, and lavish all the warmth and devotion of her nature upon her. She never once thought that in acting thus she was doing a selfish, a cruel deed--that she was taking the child from her father, who of all people living had the greatest claim upon her.

"He may have more money than I have," thought poor, mistaken Margaret, "but he cannot love her so much; and after all love is better than money."

It was easy to manage her husband. She had said but little to him at the time she undertook the charge of little Madaline, and he had been too indifferent to make inquiries. She told him now, what was in some measure quite true, that with the doctor's death her income had ceased, and that she herself not only was perfectly ignorant of the child's real name, but did not even know to whom to write. It was true, but she knew at the same time that, if she would only open the box of papers, she would not be ignorant of any one point; for those papers she had firmly resolved never to touch, so that in saying she knew nothing of the child's identity she would be speaking the bare truth.

At first Henry Dornham was indignant. The child should not be left a burden and drag on his hands, he declared--it must go to the work-house.

But patient Margaret clasped her arms round his neck, and whispered to him that the child was so clever, so pretty, she would be a gold-mine to them in the future--only let them get away from Ashwood, and go to London, where she could be well trained and taught. He laughed a sneering laugh, for which, had he been any other than her husband, she would have hated him.

"Not a bad plan, Maggie," he said; "then she can work to keep us. I, myself, do not care where we go or what we do, so that no one asks me to work."

He was easily persuaded to say nothing about their removal, to go to London without saying anything to his old friends and neighbors of their intentions. Margaret knew well that so