XXI
PROVIDENCE
Had I suspected this? Had all my efforts for the last half-hour been forthe purpose of entrapping her into some such avowal? I do not know. Myown feelings at the time are a mystery to me; I blundered on, with ablow here and a blow there, till I hit this woman in a vital spot, andachieved the above mentioned result.
I was not happy when I reached it. I felt no elation; scarcely anyrelief. It all seemed so impossible. She marked the signs of incredulityin my face and spoke up quickly, almost sharply:
"You do not believe me. I will prove the truth of what I say.Wait--wait!"--and running to a closet, she pulled out a drawer--wherewas her weakness now?--and brought from it a pair of soiled whiteslippers. "If the house had been ransacked," she proceeded pantingly,"these would have told their own tale. I was shocked when I saw theircondition, and kept my guests waiting till I changed them. Oh, they willfit the footprints." Her smile was ghastly. Softly she set the shoesdown. "Mrs. Carew helped me; she went for the child at night. Oh, we arein a terrible strait, we two, unless you will stand by us like afriend--and you will do that, won't you, Mr. Trevitt? No one else knowswhat I have just confessed--not even Doctor Pool, though he suspects mein ways I never dreamed of. Money shall not stand in the way--I have afortune of my own now--nothing shall stand in the way, if you will havepity on Mrs. Carew and myself and help us to preserve our secret."
"Madam, what secret? I pray you to make me acquainted with the wholematter in all its details before you ask my assistance."
"Then you do not know it?"
"Not altogether, and I must know it altogether. First, what has becomeof the child?"
"She is safe and happy. You have seen her; you mentioned doing so justnow."
"Harry?"
"Harry."
I rose before her in intense excitement. What a plot! I stood aghast atits daring and the success it had so nearly met with.
"I've had moments of suspicion," I admitted, after a short examinationof this beautiful woman's face for the marks of strength which her partin this plot seemed to call for. "But they all vanished before Mrs.Carew's seemingly open manner and the perfect boyishness of the child.Is she an actress too--Gwendolen?"
"Not when she plays horse and Indian and other boyish games. She is onlyacting out her nature. She has no girl tastes; she is all boy, and itwas by means of these instincts that Mrs. Carew won her. She promisedher that if she would leave home and go with her to Europe she would cuther hair and call her Harry, and dress her so that every one would thinkher a boy. And she promised her something else--that she should go toher father--Gwendolen idolizes Mr. Ocumpaugh."
"But--"
"I know. You wonder why, if I loved my husband, I should send away theone cherished object of his life. It is because our love was threatenedby this very object. I saw nothing but death and chaos before me if Ikept her. My husband adores the child, but he hates and despises afalsehood and my secret was threatened by the one man who knows it--yourDoctor Pool. My accomplice once, he declared himself ready to become myaccuser if the child remained under the Ocumpaugh roof one day after thedate he fixed for her removal."
"Ah!" I ejaculated, with sudden comprehension of the full meaning of thescrawls I had seen in so many parts of the grounds. "And by what rightdid he demand this? What excuse did he give you? His wish for money,immense money--old miser that he is!"
"No; for money I could have given him. His motive is a less tangibleone. He has scruples, he says--religious scruples following a change ofheart. Oh, he was a cruel man to meet, determined, inexorable. I couldnot move or influence him. The proffer of money only hurt my cause. Afraud had been perpetrated, he said, and Mr. Ocumpaugh must know it.Would I confess the truth to him myself? No. Then he would do so for meand bring proofs to substantiate his statements. I thought all waslost--my husband's confidence, his love, his pleasure even in the child,for it was his own blood that he loved in her, and her connection withhis family of whose prestige he has an exaggerated idea. Made desperateby the thought, I faced this cruel doctor--(it was in his own office; hehad presumed upon that old secret linking us together to summon methere)--and told him solemnly that rather than do this I would killmyself. And he almost bade me, 'Kill!' but refrained when the word hadhalf left his lips and changed it to a demand for the child's immediateremoval from the benefits it enjoyed under false pretenses."
And from this Mrs. Ocumpaugh went on to relate how he had told her thatGwendolen had inherited fortunes because she was believed to be anOcumpaugh; that not being an Ocumpaugh she must never handle thosefortunes, winding up with some such language as this: "Manage it how youwill, only relieve me from the oppression of feeling myself a party tothe grossest of deceptions. Can not the child run away and be lost? I amwilling to aid you in that, even to paying for her bringing up in somedecent, respectable way, such as would probably have been her lot if youhad not interfered to place her in the way of millions." It was a madthought, half meant and apparently wholly impossible to carry outwithout raising suspicions as damaging as confession itself. But it tookan immediate hold upon the miserable woman he addressed, though she gavelittle evidence of it, for he proceeded to add in a hard tone: "That orimmediate confession to your husband, with me by to substantiate yourstory. No slippery woman's tricks will go down with me. Fix the datehere and now and I promise to stand back and await the result in totalsilence. Dally with it by so much as an hour, and I am at your gateswith a story that all must hear." Is it a matter of wonder that thestricken woman, without counsel and prohibited, from the very nature ofher secret, from seeking counsel, uttered the first one that came tomind and went home to brood over her position and plan how she couldsatisfy his demands with the least cost to herself, her husband and thechild?
Mr. Ocumpaugh was in Europe. This was her one point of comfort. Whatwas done could be done in his absence, and this fact greatly minimizedany risk she was likely to incur. When he returned he would find thehouse in mourning, for she had already decided within herself that onlyby apparent death could this child be safely robbed of her endowments asan Ocumpaugh and an heiress. He would grieve, but his grief would lackthe sting of shame, and so in course of time would soften into a lovelymemory of one who had been as the living sunshine to him and, like thesunshine, brief in its shining. Thus and thus only could she show herconsideration for him. For herself no consideration was possible. Itmust always be her fate to know the child alive yet absolutely removedfrom her. This was a sorrow capable of no alleviation, for Gwendolen waspassionately dear to her, all the dearer, perhaps, because themother-thirst had never been satisfied; because she had held the cup inhand but had never been allowed to drink. The child's future--how to robher of all she possessed, yet secure her happiness and the prospect ofan honorable estate--ah, there was the difficulty! and one she quitefailed to solve till, in a paroxysm of terror and despair, after fivesleepless nights, she took Mrs. Carew into her confidence and imploredher aid.
The free, resourceful, cheery nature of the broader-minded woman sawthrough the difficulty at once. "Give her to me," she cried. "I lovelittle children passionately and have always grieved over my childlesscondition. I will take Gwendolen, raise her and fill her little heart sofull of love she will never miss the magnificence she has been broughtto look upon as her birthright. Only I shall have to leave thisvicinity--perhaps the country."
"And you would be willing?" asked the poor mother--mother by right ofmany years of service, if not of blood.
The answer broke her heart though it was only a smile. But such asmile--confident, joyous, triumphant; the smile of a woman who has gother heart's wish, while she, she, must henceforth live childless.
So that was settled, but not the necessary ways and means ofaccomplishment; those came only with time. The two women had always beenfriends, so their frequent meetings in the green boudoir did not wakena suspicion. A sudden trip to Europe was decided on by Mrs. Carew and bydegrees the whole plot perfected. In her eyes it loo
ked feasible enoughand they both anticipated complete success. Having decided that thescheme as planned by them could be best carried out in the confusion ofa great entertainment, cards were sent out for the sixteenth, the dateagreed upon in the doctor's office as the one which should see acomplete change in Gwendolen's prospects. It was also settled that onthe same day Mrs. Carew should bring home, from a certain small villagein Connecticut, her little nephew who had lately been left an orphan.There was no deception about this nephew. Mrs. Carew had for some timesupplied his needs and paid for his board in the farm-house where he hadbeen left, and in the emergency which had just come up, she took care topublish to all her friends that she was going to bring him home and takehim with her to Europe. Further, a market-man and woman with whom Mrs.Carew had had dealings for years were persuaded to call at her houseshortly after three that afternoon, to take this nephew of hers by acircuitous and prolonged ride through the country to an institution inwhich she had had him entered under an assumed name. All this in oneday.
Meanwhile Mrs. Carew undertook to open with her own hands a passage fromthe cellar of the bungalow into the long closed room behind thepartition. This was to insure such a safe retreat for the child duringthe first search, that by no possibility could anything be found tocontradict the testimony of the little shoe which Mrs. Ocumpaughpurposed presenting to all eyes as found on the slope leading to thatgreat burial-place, the river. Otherwise the child might have beenpassed over to Mrs. Carew at once. All this being decided upon, eachwaited to perform the part assigned her--Mrs. Carew in a fever ofdelight--for she was passionately devoted to Gwendolen and experiencednothing but rapture at the prospect of having this charming child all toherself--Mrs. Ocumpaugh, whose only recompense would be freedom from athreatening exposure which would cost her the only thing she prized, herhusband's love, in a condition of cold dread, relieved only by theburning sense of the necessity of impressing upon the whole world, andespecially upon Mr. Ocumpaugh, an absolute belief in the child's death.
This was her first care. To this her mind clung with an agony of purposewhich was the fittest preparation possible for real display of feelingwhen the time came. But she forgot one thing--they both forgot onething--that chance or Providence might ordain that witnesses should beon the road below Homewood to prove that the child did not cross thetrack at the time of her disappearance. To them it seemed enough toplead the child's love for the water, her desire to be allowed to fish,the opportunity given her to escape, and--the little shoes. Suchshort-sightedness in face of a great peril could be pardoned Mrs.Ocumpaugh on the verge of delirium under her cold exterior, but Mrs.Carew should have taken this possibility into account; and would havedone so, probably, had she not been completely absorbed in the part shewould be called upon to play when the exchange of children should bemade and Gwendolen be intrusted to her charge within a dozen rods of herown home. This she could dwell on with the whole force of her mind;this she could view in all its relations and make such a study of as toprovide herself against all contingencies. But the obvious danger of agang of men being placed just where they could serve as witnesses, incontradiction of the one fact upon which the whole plot was based, nevereven struck her imagination.
The nursery-governess whose heart was divided between her duty to thechild and her strong love of music, was chosen as their unconsciousaccomplice in this fraud. As the time for the great musicale approached,she was bidden to amuse Gwendolen in the bungalow, with theunderstanding that if the child fell asleep she might lay her on thedivan, and so far leave her as to take her place on the bench outsidewhere the notes of the solo singers could reach her. That Gwendolenwould fall asleep and fall asleep soon, the wretched mother well knew,for she had given her a safe but potent sleeping draft which could notfail to insure a twelve hours' undisturbed slumber to so healthy achild. The fact that the little one had shrunk more than ever from herattentions that morning both hurt and encouraged her. Certainly itwould make it easier for Mrs. Carew to influence Gwendolen. In her ownmind filled with terrible images of her husband's grief and her longprospective dissimulation, one picture rose in brilliant contrast to thedark one embodying her own miserable future and that of the soon-to-bebereaved father. It was that of the perfect joy of the hungry-heartedchild in the arms of the woman she loved best. It brought her cheer--itbrought her anguish. It was a salve to her conscience and a mortalthrust in an already festering wound. She shut it from her eyes as muchas possible,--and so, the hour came.
We know its results--how far the scheme succeeded and whence its greatfailure arose. Gwendolen fell asleep almost immediately on reaching thebungalow and Miss Graham, dreaming no harm and having the most perfectconfidence in Mrs. Ocumpaugh, took advantage of the permission she hadreceived, and slipped outside to sit on the bench and listen to themusic. Presently Mrs. Ocumpaugh appeared, saying that she had left herguests for a moment just to take a look at Gwendolen and see if all werewell with her.
As she needed no attendance, Miss Graham might stay where she was. AndMiss Graham did, taking great pleasure in the music, which was thefinest she had ever heard. Meanwhile Mrs. Ocumpaugh entered thebungalow, and, untying the child's shoes as she had frequently donebefore when she found her asleep, she lifted her and carried her just asshe was down the trap, the door of which she had previously raised. Thedarkness lurking in such places, a darkness which had rendered it soimpenetrable at midnight, was relieved to some extent in daylight bymeans of little grated openings in the wall under the beams, so that herchief difficulty lay in holding up her long dress and sustaining theheavy child at the same time. But the exigency of the moment and herapprehension lest Miss Graham should reenter the bungalow before shecould finish her task and escape, gave great precision to her movements,and in an incredibly short space of time she had reached those mustyprecincts which, if they should not prove the death of the child, wouldsafely shelter her from every one's eye, till the first excitement ofher loss was over, and the conviction of her death by drowning became asettled fact in every mind.
Mrs. Ocumpaugh's return was a flight. She had brought one of the littleshoes with her, concealed in a pocket she had made especially for it inthe trimmings of her elaborate gown. She found the bungalow empty, thetrap still raised, and Miss Graham, toward whom she cast a hurried lookthrough the window, yet in her place, listening with enthralledattention to the great tenor upon whose magnificent singing Mrs.Ocumpaugh had relied for the successful carrying out of what she andMrs. Carew considered the most critical part of the plot. So far then,all was well. She had but to drop the trap-door carefully to its place,replace the corner of the carpet she had pulled up, push down with herfoot the two or three nails she had previously loosened, and she wouldbe quite at liberty to quit the place and return to her guests.
But she found that this was not as easy as she had imagined. The clogsof a terrible, almost a criminal, consciousness held back her steps. Shestumbled as she left the bungalow and stopped to catch her breath as ifthe oppression of the room in which she had immured her darling hadinfected the sunny air of this glorious day and made free breathing animpossibility. The weights on her feet were so palpable to her that sheunconsciously looked down at them. This was how she came to notice thedust on her shoes. Alive to the story it told, she burst the spell whichheld her and made a bound toward the house.
Rushing to her room she shook her skirts and changed her shoes, and thusfreed from all connecting links with that secret spot, reentered amongher guests, as beautiful and probably as wretched a woman as the worldcontained that day.
Yet not as wretched as she could be. There were depths beneath thesedepths. If he should ever know! If he should ever come to look at herwith horrified, even alienated eyes! Ah, that were the end--that wouldmean the river for her--the river which all were so soon to think hadswallowed the little Gwendolen. Was that Miss Graham coming? Was thestir she now heard outside, the first indication of the hue and crywhich would soon ring through the whole place and her shrinking heartas we
ll? No, no, not yet. She could still smile, must smile and smiteher two glove-covered hands together in simulated applause of notes andtones she did not even hear. And no one noted anything strange in thatsmile or in that gracious bringing together of hands, which if any onehad had the impulse to touch--
But no one thought of doing that. A heart may bleed drop by drop to itsdeath in our full sight without our suspecting it, if the eyes above itstill beam with natural brightness. And hers did that. She had alwaysbeen called impassive. God be thanked that no warmth was expected fromher and that no one would suspect the death she was dying, if she didnot cry out. But the moment came when she did cry out. Miss Grahamentered, told her story, and all Mrs. Ocumpaugh's pent-up agony burstits bounds in a scream which to others seemed but the natural outburstof an alarmed mother. She fled to the bungalow, because that seemed thenatural thing to do, and never forgetting what was expected of her,cried aloud in presence of its emptiness: "The river! the river!" andwent stumbling down the bank.
The shoe was near her hand and she drew it out as she went on. When theyfound her she had fainted; the excess of excitement has this naturaloutcome. She did not have to play a part, the humiliation of her owndeed and the terrors yet to come were eating up her very soul. Then camethe blow, the unexpected, overwhelming blow of finding that thedeception planned with such care--a deception upon the success of whichthe whole safety of the scheme depended--was likely to fail just for thesimple reason that a dozen men could swear that the child had nevercrossed the track. She was dazed--confounded. Mrs. Carew was not by tocounsel her; she had her own part in this business to play; and Mrs.Ocumpaugh, conscious of being mentally unfit for any new planning,conscious indeed of not being able to think at all, simply followed herinstinct and held to the old cry in face of proof, of persuasion, ofreason even; and so, did the very wisest thing possible, no oneexpecting reason in a mother reeling under such a vital shock.
But the cooler, more subtile and less guilty Mrs. Carew had somejudgment left, if her friend had lost hers. Her own part had been wellplayed. She had brought her nephew home without giving any one, not eventhe maid she had provided herself with in New York, an opportunity tosee his face; and she had passed him over, dressed in quite differentclothes, to the couple in the farm-wagon, who had carried him, as shesupposed, safely out of reach and any possibility of discovery. You seeher calculations failed here also. She did not credit the doctor witheven the little conscience he possessed, and, unconscious of his nearwaiting on the highway in anxious watch for the event concerning whichhe had his own secret doubts, she deluded herself into thinking that allthey had to fear was a continuation of the impression that Gwendolen hadnot gone down to the river and been drowned.
When, therefore, she had acted out her little part--received thesearching party and gone with them all over the house even to the doorof the room where she said her little nephew was resting after hisjourney--(Did they look in? Perhaps, and perhaps not, it matteredlittle, for the bed had been arranged against this contingency and noone but a detective bent upon ferreting out crime would have found itempty)--she asked herself how she could strengthen the situation andcause the theory advanced by Mrs. Ocumpaugh to be received,notwithstanding the evidence of seeming eye-witnesses. The result wasthe throwing of a second shoe into the water as soon as it was darkenough for her to do this unseen. As she had to approach the river byher own grounds, and as she was obliged to choose a place sufficientlyremote from the lights about the dock not to incur the risk of beingdetected in her hazardous attempt, the shoe fell at a spot farther downstream than the searchers had yet reached, and the intense excitement Ihad myself seen in Mrs. Ocumpaugh's face the day I made my first visitto Homewood, sprang from the agony of suspense with which she watched,after twenty-four hours of alternating expectation and disappointment,the finding of this second shoe which, with fanatic confidence, shehoped would bring all the confirmation to be desired of her oft-repeateddeclaration that the child would yet be found in the river.
Meanwhile, to the infinite dismay of both, the matter had been placed inthe hands of the police and word sent to Mr. Ocumpaugh, not that thechild was dead, but missing. This meant world-wide publicity and theconstant coming and going about Homewood of the very men whose insightand surveillance were most to be dreaded. Mrs. Ocumpaugh sank under theterrors thus accumulating upon her; but Mrs. Carew, of differenttemperament and history, rose to meet them with a courage which badefair to carry everything before it.
As midnight approached (the hour agreed upon in their compact) sheprepared to go for Gwendolen. Mrs. Ocumpaugh, who had not forgotten whatwas expected of her at that hour, roused as the clock struck twelve, anduttering a loud cry, rushed from her place in the window down to thelawn, calling out that she had heard the men shout aloud from the boats.Her plan was to draw every one who chanced to be about, down to theriver bank, in order to give Mrs. Carew full opportunity to go and comeunseen on her dangerous errand. And she apparently succeeded in this,for by the time she had crept back in seeming disappointment to thehouse, a light could be seen burning behind a pink shade in one of Mrs.Carew's upper windows--the signal agreed upon between them of thepresence of Gwendolen in her new home.
But small was the relief as yet. The shoe had not been found, and at anymoment some intruder might force his way into Mrs. Carew's house and, inspite of all her precautions, succeed in obtaining a view of the littleHarry and recognize in him the missing child.
Of these same precautions some mention must be made. The artful widowhad begun by dismissing all her help, giving as an excuse her speedydeparture for Europe, and the colored girl she had brought up from NewYork saw no difference in the child running about the house in itslittle velvet suit from the one who, with bound-up face and a heavyshade over his eyes, came up in the cars with her in Mrs. Carew's lap.Her duties being limited to a far-off watch on the child to see that itcame to no harm, she was the best witness possible in case of policeintrusion or neighborhood gossip. As for Gwendolen herself, the noveltyof the experience and the prospect held out by a speedy departure to"papa's country" kept her amused and even hilarious. She laughed whenher hair was cut short, darkened and parted. She missed but one thing,and that was her pet plaything which she used to carry to bed with herat night. The lack of this caused some tears--a grief which was divinedby Mrs. Ocumpaugh, who took pains to assuage it in the manner we allknow.
But this was after the finding of the second shoe; the event so longanticipated and so little productive. Somehow, neither Mrs. Carew norMrs. Ocumpaugh had taken into consideration the fact of the child'sshoes being rights and lefts, and when this attempt to second the firstdeception was decided on, it was thought a matter of congratulation thatGwendolen had been supplied with two pairs of the same make and that onepair yet remained in her closet. The mate of that shown by Mrs.Ocumpaugh was still on the child's foot in the bungalow, but there beingno difference in any of them, what was simpler than to take one of theseand fling it where it would be found. Alas! the one seized upon by Mrs.Carew was for the same foot as that already shown and commented on, andthus this second attempt failed even more completely than the first, andpeople began to cry, "A conspiracy!"
And a conspiracy it was, but one which might yet have succeeded ifDoctor Pool's suspicion of Mrs. Ocumpaugh's intentions, and my ownsecret knowledge of Mrs. Ocumpaugh's real position toward this child,could have been eliminated from the situation. But with those twofactors against them, detection had crept upon them in unknown ways, andneither Mrs. Ocumpaugh's frantic clinging to the theory she had sorecklessly advanced, nor Mrs. Carew's determined effort to meetsuspicion with the brave front calculated to disarm it, was of anyavail. The truth would have its way and their secret stood revealed.
This was the story told me by Mrs. Ocumpaugh; not in the continuous anddetailed manner I have here set down, but in disjointed sentences andwild bursts of disordered speech. When it was finished she turned uponme eyes full of haggard inquiry.
"Our f
ate is in your hands," she falteringly declared. "What will you dowith it?"
It was the hardest question which had ever been put me. For minutes Icontemplated her in a silence which must have been one prolonged agonyto her. I did not see my way; I did not see my duty. Then the fiftythousand dollars!
At last, I replied as follows:
"Mrs. Ocumpaugh, if you will let me advise you, as a man intenselyinterested in the happiness of yourself and husband, I would suggestyour meeting him at quarantine and telling him the whole truth."
"I would rather die," said she.
"Yet only by doing what I suggest can you find any peace in life. Theconsciousness that others know your secret will come between you and anysatisfaction you can ever get out of your husband's continuedconfidence. A wrong has been done; you are the only one to right it."
"I can not. I can die, but I can not do that."
And for a minute I thought she would die then and there.
"Doctor Pool is a fanatic; he will pursue you until he is assured thatthe child is in good hands."
"You can assure him of that now."
"Next month his exactions may take another direction. You can nevertrust a man who thinks he has a mission. Pardon my presumption. Nomercenary motive prompts what I am saying now."
"So you intend to publish my story, if I do not?"
I hesitated again. Such questions can not be decided in a moment. Then,with a certain consciousness of doing right, I answered earnestly:
"To no one but to Mr. Ocumpaugh do I feel called upon to disclose whatreally concerns no one but yourself and him."
Her hands rose toward me in a gesture which may have been an expressionof gratitude or only one of simple appeal.
"He is not due until Saturday," I added gently.
No answer from the cold lips. I do not think she could have spoken ifshe had tried.