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MES. KEITH'S CEIME.
" 0 Weddfag-GoMt ! lUa wnl baa brcn
Jjy TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I.
LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON,
^^ublialirrs in ffinrinats to Jgn jSCajcsts t))t Succn.
^J-^'f . /5 7<?
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, UMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
TO
M. D. W.
MKS. KEITH'S CKIME.
It would be useless to try to account for the manner in which this history came to be written down. It is obvious that Mrs. Keith's hand could not have written it, nor could her voice have given it utterance, and there was none by her in that hour when love gave her terrible strength, and left her to brave eternity. It seems almost as if, as she passed along, the air itself bore witness and the wind swept into the heart of one who understood, aU the unspoken thoughts of that passionate life.
CHAPTEE I.
It cannot be true ; it must be fancy. The child is growing, has grown too fast, is delicate,
VOL. I. 1
2 MBS. KEITH'S CHIME.
and he did not know what to say, and yet he looked so grave when he heard that my mother and sister had both long ago died of consump- tion. " It often skips a generation, and then shows itself again," he said, and he seemed sorry for us when he said good-bye.
If anything happened to Molly I should go mad — ^to Molly, the little one who came six months after her father died ; Molly, with the strange longing that half frightens me written in her eyes, a longing that perhaps only years hence I shall learn to understand ; — to Molly, who is more than half the living world to me. More than half, I say, for there is Jack ; and a bonnie boy is Jack, going on for eight years old. He has sturdy legs, and wide-open blue eyes, and a crop of golden hair. But my heart has never ached for him as it has for Molly, and love has no bands that bind so fast and close as those that fear and sorrow weave. If
Molly dies But I dare not think of it,
for I can face nothing, can go on no longer, if that is to be. After all, we have only a certain
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 3
amount of courage in us, and mine was all used up in past days; there is none left for this.
How cruel it seems. I sit down and try to think over the years since Molly's father died. They are only a few, after all, and yet how long a time they seem. You know how it all <3ame about, how happy we were, how in an hour the whole world changed. It is madden- ing to remember it — ^the summer morning and the sunshine ; and the laughter of the children on the beach ; and his last words, " I shall not •be long, my darling. Go home and wait for me. You are tired.^' I got up and went •home, turning, as I stood on the steps, to take -another look at the sea — ^the sea that was killing him even while I looked, and laughed, and felt so happy ; and then I waited for him just as he had told me. They carried liim back. I can hear the slow tramp, tramp of their feet now, and see the water dropping from his hair and the cloth with which they had covered him. There he lay, he who but
4 MJRS. KEITH'S CHIME.
an hour before had been a strong man, dead — dead for evermore. . . .
There was no money when Arthur died. His pictures were only just beginning to sell. We had made this little home in St. John's Wood, and lived on hope and credit and the few commissions that came in, and on any- thing that turned up ; a pleasant, happy-go- lucky life enough, but one in which there was no margin left for accident or sorrow. I wrote to uncle Clement, the one relation we had in the world, or rather, the only one at alii likely to help us. He was very good in a rather cold, hold-aloof manner. He and my father had never been very cordial brothers ;: the one was rich, and the other had had nothing but his pay, and many a deep gulf is dug with gold, especially between relations. But he was very good to the children and me, and let us stay in this little house, and kept us going, to a certain extent.
When I got better I wanted to do some- thing for myself, and, after much consideration,.
MES. KEITH'S CRIME. 5
decided to give lessons in painting ; but it was very difficult to get pupils, and at last I tried doing portraits of children, and met with a great deal of success. I don't do them very w^ell, perhaps, but the mothers say that I have a knack of catching a likeness, and of catching it just when a child is looking its prettiest ; so they are always pleased, and gradually I have become almost a fashion and, though my work is certainly not well paid for, I can get as many portraits to do as I please.
Uncle Clement died three years since, and left me a hundred a year ; it is to go to Jack at my death. Poor little Molly was ignored altogether, for uncle Clement did not like girls; he thought them mere frivolities, that sensible women only bore sons, and to daughters he would give no encouragement.
On the whole we have managed pretty well. I think bitterly, as I look round the little drawing-room, with the palms, and the Japanese fans, and the little bits of china, and the daring gold-and-chocolate covers, that give
6 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
the room an individuality of its own. I have been so proud of our little home and of all the folk, working folk mostly, artists like myself, who came to see me. It has been something to feel that they recognized me and numbered me among themselves, as if they knew all the longings that were in my work, all the hard-trying and good intentions, and were mercifully blind to the weakness of its execution. Sometimes I have been really suc- cessful, and have seen my name in the catalogue of the minor exhibitions. Once it was in the Grosvenor list, and it made me so happy, I felt as if T was swimming through the crowd at the private view, and that all the world was making way for me, conscious of my triumph and sharing it. It seems so foolish now, but I have even tried to learn the names of safe investments for small sums, feelinor that the time would come soon when a little could be put by for Jack's education; and now suddenly all this dreaming has vanished. MoUy has been looking ill for a long time.
MJRS. KEITH'S CBIME. 7
We went for a fortnight to Broadstairs and spent the days together, we three never separating, but staying all day upon the beach, or dawdling along the little pier, or wandering through the fields to Eamsgate, and drinking milk, and driving back in an extravagant fly. But still she did not get better. She was only growing, I thought, and waited ; but she did not get better. Then at last I took her to Dr. Finch. He is a great man; there is no disputing his opinion; and when he had examined Molly he looked grave enough, and said that the best thing of all would be to get her out of England for the winter. " It may be the saving of her,^' he said gently. It may 1 I looked up at him half dazed. I am half dazed still.
Mrs. Marshall was waiting to see me when we returned, about her little godchild's por- trait. I told her what Dr. Finch had said, and told her so calmly that she looked at me curiously as she answered, " It is very sad for you." She said the words in an odd, polite
8 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
voice, as if she wondered whether I cared. Perhaps it bored her to be told about the child, for she is an odd, formal person, with an even, passionless voice and a strange, un- sympathetic manner. Once I caught myself wondering whether her husband had made love to her before he married her, and if he did now, and whether she ever did anything kind, save as a matter of principle. With her all things seem to have a foundation of principles or convictions, and love and pity and hate to have no power over her. Perhaps it is an excellent thing ; principles and convictions give one cold comfort, but they are responsible for few crimes.
"I am not sure that I can undertake the portrait," I told her. " There are some things to finish, and we are going abroad for the winter."
" You can arrange to leave your work and go ? " she asked, in surprise. She knew me a little in old days when Arthur was here, and knew what a struggle we had, and how neces-
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 9
sary uncle Clement's help had been afterwards. I half resented the question.
" I must/' I answered. " One does not con- sider whether one can arrange a thing that may save one's child's life."
" Going abroad is very expensive," she said. Her words were considerate, but her voice was still only polite ; there was not the ghost of any sympathy in. it. It was just as well, in the state of mind I was in.
" It may be expensive," I answered ; " but at the worst we'll walk, and I'll carry the babes on my back."
" You'U have to swim across the Channel," she said, with an odd, grim smile.
A flood of memories rushed into my heart at her words, and I checked a little cry that all but escaped my lips. In a moment I had seen Arthur going down to the sea, and had heard him teU me once again to wait for him. Per- haps the message he sent me the moment that he died is written in Molly's eyes ; for the first time it went through me like a flash that
10 MRS. KEITH'S CRIME.
this was the strange meaning in them that I was for ever yearning to tmderstand. Mrs. Marshall turned almost pale as she realized all that her words had made me remember.
" I am very sorry," she said humbly ; "it was very stupid of me. I am always saying the wrong things. How old is Molly?" she asked, in an abrupt voice, as if anxious to do the best she could towards separating my thoughts from my memories.
"She is nearly six; she is the baby," I answered.
She was silent for a moment, and then she said, more to herself than to me, "Yes, I understand; I dare say you will always call her the baby, even when she is grown up."
And then she went away, and I have come in here to rest and to try and realize what it all means.
It is odd how different this room looks to- day ; there is something cruel and mocking about it. There, on the easel, is the picture Clarence Grove gave me at Christmas. The
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 11
foreground is coarsely painted, but I never noticed that before. I turn from it, and look at the palms standing in large pots on the floor of the little conservatory, the black-and-white pavement makes me shiver. The flowers about the room are fresh and bright ; the chintz covers have a happy dainty air. There is something satisfied about the whole place, and yet Molly is upstairs, and the doctor says that if she goes abroad it may — only that it may and not that it will — ^be the saving of her. It is odd how difficult it is to feel or realize all that is in the words, though MoUy is just life to me. It seems as if I had changed into some other person, and, keeping my own set of memories, look on half curiously at the old self which has shut a door of some kind on me, so that I can no longer enter it. Or else some- thing has failed, some of the wheels in me have ceased to go, as in a machine a little bit out of order. It seems impossible that in a month's time we shall all be in another land, and the studio closed, and the commissions
12 MBS. KEITH'S CBJME.
going elsewhere, and this pretty room will be all covered up, and the palms and the flowers will be dying, and the big picture taken down from the easel and turned with its face to the wall. I wonder what made Clarence Grove give that picture to me ? for he is not rich and he has a wife and many children. It is called "The Forsaken Garden," after Swinburne's poem, and under it is a quotation from it — "Bright with a summer to be." In fancy I have often wandered down the half -hidden pathways, and among the brake and briar. It makes me shudder to think of the people who once made the garden trim and neat and full of sweet-smelling flowers ; they are all sleeping in the churchyard — you can see their graves over the hill in the comer there — and the sea is breaking on the shingly beach below, and the sun is shining, and strangers are coming to make the garden trim again and to laugh through "the summer to be." I am never tired of wondering who these are that are coming.
MRS. KEITH'S CRIME. 13
I wonder how we shall get the money to take US abroad ? This question is beginning to present itself. There are some commissions, but no time to execute them. There is very little money in the house. At Christmas there will be fifty pounds due, but rent and taxes to pay out of it. The money must be found ; but how ? We have nothing to sell, and no one of 1^hom to borrow. It seems impossible to get it, and yet it must be got somehow. If it only saves her ; if only some day I sit here again, knowing that she is upstairs, bright and strong and sturdy as Jack is, what trifles all the diffi- culties wiU seem looking back at them across the good thing that wiU have been accom- plished. How would it do, I wonder, if we went to some warm spot in the south — ^we could just manage to get there, perhaps — and then I tried to earn some money by painting portraits ? Long ago, in Switzerland — it was in the first year of our marriage — ^we were staying at a mountain place, shivering with cold, and calling the man who built the rooms without fireplaces
14 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
an idiot, when one day a travelling artist turned up. Never dreaming that Arthur was of his own trade, he painted our portraits and the portraits of four or five other people in the hotel, for ten francs each, and then packed up his canvas, rolled it round with black American cloth, and went on his way as blithe as a swallow journeying south. Why should not I do that kind of thing ? It would be very gipsy-like and independent. Perhaps I might take clothes enough in my pocket to give a hand to each of the children, or carry them on my back as I had suggested to Mrs. Marshall ; or at any rate I might put them, and our luggage too, into a wheelbarrow and push it on in front. Arthur and I often used to sit and speculate on various ways of living, wondering out of which most happiness could be got.
" I should like a caravan," I remember say- ing to him once, "with brooms and brushes and baskets hanging outside, and a chimney- pot and smoke coming out of it ; and inside
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 15
there should be a little bed to sleep in, and a little stove to cook at, and two seats, and a few pots and pans, packed so as neither to rattle nor to break ; and you should lead the horse and crack a whip now and then, and I would sell our wares as we went along, to the folk who lived in out-of-the-way cottages and seldom went to town. And for dinner we would buy some meat, and when we had cooked it we would eat it in our little house, looking out at the sweet country-side the while ; and at night we would draw up under a tree, and sleep soundly till the birds called us in the morning. It would be a glorious life, with no bills and no best clothes, and few amenities."
*' Pleasant enough," said Arthur, thought- fully ; " but I think it would be a better thing to be a bargee — to sit all day long at the end of a barge, smoking a short pipe and swearing at the boy on the towing-path."
" But where should I be ? "
"You should crouch down beside me, my darling," he answered. *^You would like that? "
16 MRS. KEITH'S CRtME.
''Oh yes. I should hear so many wicked words ; it would be delightful."
" The worst of it is," he went on, with a sigh, "that the spread of science and education together will, I fear, do away with the barge and the boy, perhaps even with the swearing."
I think of this merry talk now sadly enough, sitting alone with the vagabond longings rising up within me. But I must go upstairs and see my little one. It is never possible to stay away from her long.
She is in the nursery, sitting quite stiU, with an open picture-book in her lap, watching Jack, who is on the rocking-horse, singing as he rocks to an fro, and sharpening a pencil at the same time ; the rein is twisted round his left hand.
"Molly doesn't care a bit about anything, mother," he says, "so I am singing to her."
So sweet a little voice has Jack ; we always like to listen to him, and to look at his pretty round face while he sings.
MRS. KEIIWS CHIME. 17
" I am tired, mammy," Molly says ; and, getting up, she clings to me and puts her head on my shoulder.
''My poor little darling," I say, and she nestles down close in my arms. '' Do yqu know, my children," I tell them suddenly, "that you are going into a strange country soon ? " My heart fails me as I think of the money ; but the children are listening eagerly, so I go on without flinching. " Into a strange country, where it will be beautifully sunny and warm all through the winter."
" Perhaps we shall be able to pick flowers ? " Molly says dreamily.
" Will there be any robbers or wild beasts ? " Jack asks in the tone of one prepared to fight a legion.
VOL. T.
)
18 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
CHAPTER 11.
I HAVE been trying to rest a little, lying on the sofa in my own room, but it is no good ; my brain is in a whirl still. The nursery tea went up just now; it must be nearly five o'clock. Even a few minutes' sleep would help me to think better, but as it is I am dazed and useless.
The servant enters with a card. "Mr. Cohen, ma'am, and he hopes you'll be able to see him."
I would give the world not to do so, but cannot well refuse. He is an old friend and knew my husband well, and has been good- natured, and made people send their children to have their portraits painted in the days when commissions were few and far between. So I get up and smooth my hair and look
MBS. KEITJETS CRIME. 19
at myself in the wardrobe glass, for I am glad to do anything or think of anything save Molly, and yet she is not for a single moment out of my thoughts. And so I stand and look at myself in the glass. I was always slight and pale, but lately I have grown terribly thin and tired-looking, and there are black rings under my eyes that make me look ill. The only beauty left me is my hair. I have quantities of soft light hair. I hardly know what to do with it, and twist it round my head, and flatten it down, and vainly try to make it look prim and neat.
As I pass the nursery door I listen for a moment to the voices within. Jack is talking, but suddenly stops — to eat bread and jam, perhaps — and then Molly says, " Go on. Jack ; do go on," in an eager voice.
" AU right ; wait a bit."
Molly may be too excited by Jack's con- versation to eat, I think, so I put my head in at the door, and seeing that her face is hidden in her mug of milk, am satisfied. For
20 MRS. KEITH'S CRIME.
a moment everytliing swims. It is probably the worry of this strange day. And then I go downstairs to my visitor,
Mr. Cohen is a Jew, and never hesitates to proclaim it. The Jews are the finest people in the worldj he says, and the oldest. Adam was a Jew ; and when you talk to him about evolution, he says that if the theory is true, then the first man worthy of the name who was evolved was a Jew, and that the last man left in possession, when all the rest have died off, will be a Jew, and a triumphant proof of the survival of the fittest. "It is the best thing on earth to be a Jew, and the wisest to be proud of it," he said once in my hearing, to some one who was a little inclined to " chaff '' him. So the chaff came to an untimely end, and he remained unruffled, conscious of having the best of it. He is a tall, dark young man, not very young, but by courtesy is called so, for he goes to dance?, and is unmarried. He is like a sardine to look at ; so very like a sardine — ^long and dark, and lank and oily. I
MBS. KEITH'S CBIME. 21
feel convinced that he sleeps in a tin box ; there seems to be always a faint odour of spice about him. He is very rich, and knows it; you are constantly made aware that he knows it ; yet he is good-hearted, pleased with him- self and the world in general — a man who has never known worry, and never wiU know it. He is blessed with no strong feelings; has never been deeply in love, and never will be ; thinks marriage would be a bore ; and that " if anything does happen, and any one belong- ing to one chumps up, you know, why, it can't be helped; one must just put up with it." " Chumps up " means dies.
I feel cold and stiff and disagreeable as I enter. Perhaps he'll ask after Molly. I could not bear to teU him that she is ill. He would say, " What a bore. It's to be hoped she won't chump up," and laugh. His mother died two years ago. He told me of it, and laughed a little then. Perhaps it was only nervousness, for he had been a good kind son. If he laughed about Molly, I would never speak to him again ; but
22 MBS. KEITH'S CBIME.
I will take care not to mention the children. He comes eagerly forward to meet me as I enter, and shakes my hand quickly, as if he were in a hurry.
" How do you do ? " he says. " Why, you don^t look up to much. Aren't you well ? "
" Oh yes, thank you ; I am quite well," I answer. " How are you ? " and I sit down, and try to look interested in what he will say ; but everything seems changed, and I am con- sciously acting a part.
" I know all about it," he says, as he takes the chair opposite to me. " You are bothered about the young 'un. Been to a wedding, and met Mrs. Marshall as I was coming away, and she told me you were up a tree, so I thought I'd come round."
He says it in the most cheerful tone, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for one's child to be ill, and for one's self to be up a tree, as he calls it. I am vexed with Mrs. Marshall for telling him, only I wonder that she remembered to do so, for she is
MSS. KEITH'S CBIME. 23
childless herself, and never seems to care for chUdren.
"I am awfully sorry for you," the sardine goes on. I always caU him the sardine in my thoughts.
"I know you are, of course/' I answer gently ; " but don't let us talk about it."
"What are you going to do?" he asks, taking no notice of my request.
" Going abroad."
" Awful bore that ; interfere with your work, and cost a lot."
" Yes, I suppose it will," I answer, trying to speak cheerfully and feeling that it is a dismal failure. "But one must not think of that when one's child is in danger."
"No, of course not," he says, looking vacantly into space. Evidently he is not much concerned ; but why on earth should he be? We are nothing to him. "Been busy lately ? ". he asks.
"Yes, pretty well," I answer, supposing that he has tired of the other subject already.
24 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
^' Tell me what you have been doing," I add, determined to talk of other things.
" Not much," he says absently. " Nothing going on just now."
" You have been to a wedding 1 " . Perhaps he would like to talk about that, I think.
"Yes." Evidently he doesn't care about it. He is very absent to-day.
" A pretty bride ? " I ask the question mechanically, just to fill up time. If I could only get away to Molly 1
" Yes ; nothing out of the way. Bridegroom twenty years older — selfish beggar. Never saw him before, and didn't think much of him."
" But how do you know that he is selfish ? "
" Always think a man is selfish who marries any one a lot younger than himself."
"But why?"
"Well, you see, he condemns the woman who cares about him to certain widowhood — that is, in the natural course of things. If she doesn't care about him, he is the means of making her look forward to a good time coming
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 25
when lie will be out of the way and she will have the cash-box to herself, and that kind of thing spoils any woman's nature."
" Why, of course," I answer, beginning to be interested. " But they may care for each other very much, so much that for the sake of the present happiness ste is wiUing to risk his dying first. After all, people don't always die in the order of their ages."
But the sardine is a man who thinks that if he has convictions it is his duty to stand by them, so he shakes his head.
'^^ Don't believe in it," he says. "Not the kind of love that should be between husband and wife — can't be real chums and companions, and that sort of thing ; they are on such difierent platforms, you know."
I can hardly believe that he has been thinking this out for himself.
" But surely " I begin, and stop with a
gasp, for. suddenly there comes the pain that has so often worried me lately ; it takes away my breath and makes me feel cold and sick for
26. MB 8. KEITH'S CRIME.
a minute or two, and then leaves a dull sense of misery and weakness behind it. *^Biit
surely companionship " and I am forced
to stop again. If it gets worse I must speak to a doctor ; but I am always ashamed to com- plain of my own aches and pains, and my heart is so full of memories and the children and of work, that I forget them unless they are actually on me. I sometimes think that people who have a great deal to do, and who have known much sorrow, are just a little beyond physical pain — a little farther away from it than others, as they are from little sorrows. Given the strong motive, tell me that at the other end I should meet my dear ones once again, and I could walk through hell's flames without flinching ; nay, should almost find the burning sweet, as, let us hope, the martyrs did of old, because of the great happiness awaiting them at the end.
" I say 1 " the sardine exclaims. " You don't look well ; lips as white as chalk. What's the matter I "
MES. KEITH'S CRIME. 27
" Nothing/' I answer. " Go on ; the wed- ding " and I feel the pain in an odd
muffled way, as if it were wrapped in some- thing, or had gone a little way off ; and then I am conscious of looking at a little table oppo- site. " Go on ; the wedding " I hear
myself saying as I might hear another person speak, and all things come forward and slip past me or under my feet, and something tight is round my heart — Molly. . . .
When I come to, Mr. Cohen is sitting by the sofa on which I am lying, a white pillow is under my head, a smelling-bottle on the little table.
" What is the matter ? '' I ask.
"Had a faint, that's all," he answers. "Do you often do that ?''
" Why, no," I answer, in surprise. " I never had one before that I remember."
"Well, you had better take care of yourself as well as of the young 'un, or you'll chump up.
" That would be a bore," I say, getting up
28 MES. KEITH'S CRIME.
from the sofa and trying to answer him in his own key, for I remember everything now.
" Awful bore/' he says thoughtfully. "Who'd look after the young 'uns ? "
And then suddenly I disgrace myself, for, without any seeming rhyme or reason, I feel a choking in my throat, and the hot tears in my eyes, and before I know anything more I am crying, there straight before him. I get back my self-control in a minute or two, and manage to laugh in what I hope is a merry, careless fashion. The poor sardine is evidently sorely puzzled what to do.
" I am very stupid," I say ; " but indeed I can't help it."
" Oh no, you are not stupid," he says, in a kind, consoling voice, as if he did not exactly think that of me. *^ But don't cry ; it's no good crying, you know."
" Oh no, it's no good crying," I echo^
" Of course you are not really going to chump up."
''It would be a good thing and real
MBS. KEITH'S CBIME, 29
economy," I say, " if every family did its dying all at once. If we three, all at the same moment, could creep into a cosy grave, I should be thankful and glad. Oh, I should be so glad that I believe I could get up and waltz with the tombstone."
"That would be a lark," he answers, evi- dently thinking of something else. Then he looks at his watch, and I wonder how long he has been here.
" I am afraid my fainting has prevented you from keeping some engagement," I say,
" Lots of time," he answers. " I have to dine out at eight. It's not six yet; must get to the club for half an hour, though. St. John's Wood is rather out of the beaten track, you see."
I wait a minute or two, hoping that he will get up to go, but he makes no sign. Then I wonder if he would like some tea. It would prolong his visit, but this tiresome time must have fatigued him.
" We might have some tea," I say, perhaps not too cordially and longing to be alone.
30 MUS. KEITH'S CniME.
" That's an idea/' he answers, with an air of relief; "Tllring."
So the tea-things are brought in, and I make an effort to be cheerful and not to think of Molly, and to take no notice of the achiug that is still going on in a dull, methodical way. While I make tea the sardine walks about the room, and looks at the paintings and the odds and ends of china.
" That picture of Grove's isn't up to much," he says.
" I like it," I answer.
"That's a good thing," he says cheerfully, as if he had feared I did not. " There's a little bit here, now, that rather takes my fancy;" and he looks at a tiny picture — a girl making lace, which an old schoolfellow gave me as a wedding gift. '^ Pretty little thing," he says, as he puts it back into its place. *^ Don't suppose it's worth anything, but the idea's pretty. I rather like it."
"Edith Clark gave it to me as a wedding present," I say. " It is pretty ; Mr. Layton
MBS. KEITH'S CBIME. 31
once took a great fancy to it, and offered me twenty pounds.for it."
" Why ever didn't you take it ? " he asks, astonished. " It isn't worth that ; it isn't worth five, I should say." The sardine has an idea that he knows a good deal about pictures.
" I know ; but I ' am very fond of the girl who gave it to me. She is in India now."
" Yes, but twenty pounds. You might have given her half, and got her to paint another when she came back."
"She might never come back," I remark, as I put the water into the pot.
'^ Then she wouldn't know you had sold it. You'll want a lot of money to go abroad with," he tells me again, as he drinks his tea.
" Yes, I suppose so."
" Made up your mind where to go ? "
" Not yet, but south, of course," I answer. " We are to go to Dr. Finch again, and he will tell us."
" You know, a winter abroad costs an awful lot," he says, in the tone of a man who knows
32 MRS. KEITH'S CRIME,
all about it ; **aiid one must do things comfort- ably, especially with an invalid. It runs into a lot of money."
" Of course it does/' I say cheerfully, as if I do not mind in the least.
He gets up and walks uneasily about the room again, and suddenly sits down on a chair rather nearer to me than before, and begins in an awkward manner to hug his knee. Then he gets up and walks about again, and I notice that his face is a little flushed this last minute or two.
" Look here," he begins, clearing his throat, " you mustn't mind what I am going to say, Mrs. Keith. The fact is, I am awfully sorry for you about the young 'un. It does seem hard lines when you have just got things straight a bit. It struck me that this might have come rather suddenly, and I know going away wiU cost a lot; it always does. I'm an old traveller and know all about it, you see."
" Yes ? "
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 33
"Well, you are not rich, and I am, though it doesn't do to own it always," he adds cautiously ; " but I am, and I have no one loafing about and hanging on to me, and I wish you would let me be of some service to you "
"Oh no, no," I begin. There is that in his tone and manner which makes it impos- sible to take offence, or to be anything but very grateful to him. I look up thankfully enough at the sardine, and feel what a good fellow he is, but I am not going to take his money.
"Why not?" he pleads. "My sisters are rich, but I am only saying to you what I should say to them if they were not. I am so sorry for you; it is very hard lines that this should come. It would do me lots of good, and make me awfully grateful if you'd — ^if you'd let me pay say four or five hundred pounds into your bankers^ and you'd slide through the winter all right then/'
Four or five hundred pounds I
VOL. I. 3
34 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
" But, Mr. Cohen, I couldn't '' I begin
gratefully enough ; but he interrupts me, and hurries on.
^*I don't mean as a loan; that would only hamper you — ^unless, of course, you would rather have it that way. I mean just as you accept it from your brother, or your sister, or a relation of any sort ; " and he tries to laugh. ** I never do any good, but if I helped to get your little chick right, I should feel set up in virtue for a long time to come."
*^ Oh, but I can't I " I cry, feeling that this money must be refused, though where else it will come from I cannot tell. ^*I am very grateful and will never forget your kindness, but I cannot accept it.'*
" Why not ? " he asks, with a calm air of wonder, and there is an expression on his face that shows how hurt he is, and how vexed.
^^ I don't know," I falter, for it is all so sudden, and I have no reasons ready to hand. " I can't tell you. I never took money from any one except' uncle Clement. It seems like
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 35
a confession of failure to take it Of course it will be very diflScult to manage this going ; I don't know yet how it will be managed ; but
please don't " And my tears begin to
come again, and will not be stopped*
He waits for a minute or two, then gets up. *^ Well, look here," he says, " if you will, there it is. Think it over. If you like to pay me back, or to work it off in commissions when you come home, you can. Don't let the young 'un chump up for want of anything that's to be had for the asking."
'* Oh no ; I would beg filrst."
" You had better come to me before begging. After aU, it is nothing to make a fuss about I shouldn't miss it, you know ; why, I should forget all about it in a fortnight." And he wrings my hand, and in another five minutes has gone.
The sardine's visit leaves me face to face with the money question. I stare blankly round the room, and a little shudder seems to overtake me as I wonder what I shall do. I
36 MBS. KEITH'S CBIME.
have refused help from the only person who is likely to give it. I have nothing in hand or to come beyond the few pounds in the house and the fifty pounds which will be due at Christmas, and out of that there are payments to make. There are a few pictures which might be sold to dealers; but they are not worth much, and they were gifts, and I should be sorry to part from them. We have no trinkets ; nothing of any kind worth selling. We have no relations save a few cousins, and of these I know only one, and know her but slightly. There is no time to work before the date at which Dr. Finch says we should start, and yet we must go ; it is not a case of **if " and "perhaps," but one of "must." This house may let, but it is very tiny, and would only sufiice for one or two people; and though it is pretty, very pretty and artistic, yet many things which we are able to do without would have to be bought for a tenant, and at best it would not let for much. Oh, Molly, I wonder how it will aU end. I go and look at the
MBS. KEITH'S CBIME. 37
picture, and wonder vaguely, as I have wondered half insanely many times before, if the people who sleep in the little churchyard sorrowed much, and if the people who are coming to the garden, the people who will gather the flowers and laugh beneath the blue sky, will be happy long. Happiness always seems to me to be like a traveller passing by, staying, perhaps, a little while here and a little while there, but having no abiding-place.
Molly But I am very tired. Perhaps
things will be clearer in the morning. I will creep upstairs and have a long sleep, with my little one in my arms.
38 JOBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
CHAPTER III.
The morning light has brought me to my senses. Last night I thought we had no money beyond what I have stated ; this morn^ ing, with the sunshine coming into my room^ and Molly asleep beside me, like a flash of lightning the remembrance of the hundred a year imcle dement left us came to me. It is in the hands of trustees, but of course they will advance suflicient to take Molly abroad when they are told that it is a matter of life and death; it is only what uncle Clement would have wished. We shall be able to repay what we borrow; and as I am making more every year, the debt will not make much difference in our income. We shall not want a very large sum. Four or five hundred
MRS. KEITH'S CBIME. 39
pounds would be absurd ; but perhaps we had better have two hundred, as there will be four of us, including nurse. We can bring back what we do not spend. Then, if this house does not let, we shall be safe ; but the house must be let somehow. I turn and look at Molly. Her face is very thin, but in the sunshine I feel so strong myself it seems as if my strength is enough to save her, and in the south she will be able to run about all day, or to lie still in the sweet soft air and watch Jack. She is certain to get well ; she must, she shall. Perhaps Dr. Finch took an over- gloomy view of things. He is a rather gloomy man.
This very morning I will go to the trustees, and then that matter will be settled. After wondering whether it would be better to go to Mr. Beccles or to Colonel Anson, I decide upon the former. So I get ready quickly, and half an hour after breakfast sally forth. It is a long way from St. John's Wood to Chancery Lane, but I walk more than half the distance
40 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
considering what to say. My heart sinks a little as at last I mount the stairs leading to the lawyer's office, my voice trembles when I ask for Mr. Beccles.
" He is out of town till to-morrow night," the clerk tells me. " He will be here again on Thursday," and to-day is Tuesday.
" I will come again on Thursday morning," I say, and turn wearily homewards.
It is twelve o'clock when I get back, perhaps later. The house is all in a commotion. Two hours ago nurse was sent for by her married daughter at Kingsland. She is very ill. They are afraid that it is scarlet fever, and nurse went off in a great state of mind. Poor nurse ! it will worry her sadly, for this is her only daughter, and all her sons are away in Germany. Nurse is a good, kind, rather stupid old soul ; but I have kept her because she is so fond of us all. She has spoilt the children, and she is not a good nurse or very careful in some ways, but that has not mattered, for I look after the children so much myself, and
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 4l
she is so very kind to them that it has been easy to forgive her shortcomings.
But if her daughter really has scarlet fever, of course nurse will not be able to go with us, and so a new difl&culty may arise. I cannot go alone with two children, for one may possibly want all my time, and it will be vexing to take a stranger. But, after all, this is a minor trouble, and will arrange itself, no doubt There is the money to get, and packing to do, and getting ready in all ways to flit for six months. It is no good to sit and dream.
In the afternoon I go upstairs, and begin turning out. Poor old nm:se, who no doubt is anxious enough, will probably want some of her clothes. I will pack them, and send them to her if she is not back by seven to- night ; for if it is safe to come, she will certainly be here in time to put the children to bed. Suddenly it strikes me that there are some things in the cupboard that might be useful to her, for the daughter is very poor. In the medicine cupboard, too, there is some
42 MRS. KEITH'S CBIME.
eau-de-cologne. I get out the eau-de-cologne and look in at my little store of odds and ends. Some of these simple drugs must go to the south with us, and this bottle of chloroform for my neuralgia. Sometimes, when the pain is very worrying, I use a little of it until, dazed and stupid, I drop off to sleep ; but I have had to be careful lately, for I fancied it affected my heart. I must get some more things to take abroad, for foreign drugs are seldom good. So many things there are to buy, and Molly shall have a little travelling- cloak, and a hood for her golden head; and Jack, too, must be made smart. They are pretty children; people are sure to admire them. I have found all the things nurse may want, and will pack them. Then my eye catches the bottle of chloroform again. It must on no account be left behind. There is always a difficulty in buying it, and something, I do not know what, makes me treasure up this bottle, in its olive wood case, very carefully. That dear little rascal Jack is singing at the
MBS. KEITH'S CHIME. 43
top of his voice ; but what is Molly doing ? I go into the nursery, and find him on the rocking-horse, his head thrown back, his face aglow with excitement, shouting with all his might —
*' A ship, a ship arsailing, a-sailing on the sea, And it is deeply laden with pretty things for me."
Molly is sitting in the armchair, watching her brother with the deepest admiration. She is always content to watch Jack, and to listen while he sings, but she never offers to join in any game. She is too glad to rest is little Molly.
" Don't make so much noise, my sonnie," I say ; "you will give Molly a headache."
" Oh no, mother," Molly says, with a long drawn-out sigh of satisfaction. " I do so like to hear him. Go on. Jack ; " and seeing that they are happy together, I leave them, while my bonnie boy's voice rings out joyfully —
" The foiir-and-twenty sailors who walk about the
decks Are four-and -twenty white mice with chains about
their necks."
44 MBS. KEITH'S CBIME.
And while I am busy in my own room, the door opens, and there is nurse.
** Nurse 1 " I exclaim. " I am so glad to see you. Is your daughter well, then ? "
The poor soul's eyes fill with tears. "No, ma'am ; she is very bad," she answers.
Then a terror seizes me ; for do we not all think of our own ?
" Nurse," I say, " is it safe to come here ? Are you siu:e she has not scarlet fever ? "
" Yes, ma'am ; it is quite safe," she says, in surprise. "I have not been in the room where she is for two hours. But I don't know what to do, ma'am ; for they think she has got the fever, and I do want to be with her, ma'am, and I don't know what you'll do with- out your old nurse."
" Oh, nurse, go ! " I cry, " and don't come here again until I give you leave. If you gave the children scarlet fever, you would never forgive yourself."
" I am sm:e, ma'am, I can't," she urges, in her broken English. "My daughter is only
MRS. KEITH'S CRIME, 45
just beginning, and perhaps it isn't scarlet fever, after all."
"Nurse, pray go away," I cry in despair, " I know you love the children."
" Yes, ma'am ; that's why I am come, and for my things. I kno\^ you would not like me to stay away from my daughter when she is ill "
"I am packing your clothes. Go outside and get into a cab ; but no, you mustn't do that, or you will give it to some one else, perhaps. Go outside and wait, dear nurse. I will send your clothes out to you or bring them. I am so sorry for you, but you must not enter the house again until I give you leave, and "
Suddenly hearing her voice, Jack runs out, and throws his arms round her neck.
"Nursee!" he exclaims. "Hulloa, old
nursee."
(C
Go away ! " I cry, trying to drag the child from her.
But he clings to her, and manages to
46 MRS. KEITH'S CRIME,
climb on to her back, and, with a shout of laughter, puts his arms tighter round her neck and his Uttle bare legs round her waist, and suddenly that awful pain comes, and my strength fails, but only for a moment With a great effort I force the pain back, and nurse and the child apart,
" Go away, mine dear," she says ; " Til be back soon again. I am sure, ma'am, it is safe. Won't you let me see Miss Molly again ? " The woman must be mad, I think. She is a sturdy, kind-hearted German woman, who has never been ill and seldom out of temper m her life, and infection is a thing she looks upon as a popular delusion. " I wouldn't do her any harm for the world," she pleads ; '* you know I wouldn't, ma'am."
**Yes, I know you wouldn't," I say; "but for goodness sake, dear nurse, go away."
At last she leaves the house ; and when her things are sent out to her, I rush upstairs and put Jack into a bath, and resolve that nurse shall never come back again. She is
MES. KEITH'S CRIME. 47
good and kind-hearted, and would give her life for the children; but she is careless, and has lived her life free of aches and pains, and is a little sceptical of danger for others.
When Jack is rubbed and scrubbed and in fresh clothes, I laugh at my own fears and violence, for he must be safe now, and I go downstairs exhausted, and lie still upon the 3ofa for a little while. And then a bruise, which is oddly painful, and was done by a pole when we were getting the studio ready for my *' at home," sets me suddenly thinking of some absurd troubles of my childhood. There was a little boy who used to come and stay next •door to my father's house when I was a child, and he and I were playfellows. "VVe were fond of each other, but we had terrible quarrels, and my arms were black and blue with the pinches he gave me, for my skin easily discolours. Then, when he found that the marks of his cruelty showed, he took to pinching my legs, :so that I bitterly regretted having arrived at the age of stockings. Never did anyone or
48 MBS. KEITH'S CHIME.
anything pinch as he did, and yet we liked each other ; and when at last he went awaj, I got up at six in the morning to say good-bye to him, and clambered up on the fence so that he might lean over and give me a parting kiss. I have never seen Ealph Bicknell since that chilly grey morning, but I have never forgotten his pinches.
No ; it will never do to have nurse back, but some one else must be found at once to take her place. I will write to Mrs. Marshall, and ask if she knows of any one likely to do. On " Show Sunday '' I heard her talking to a friend about some girl in whom she was interested. It vexed me at the time, for she seemed to care more for the girl than for the pictures, hardly looked at the latter, and for- got to say anything about them. That is a long while ago, but still she may know of some one. We must have a new nurse at once, for Jack is brimful of mischief and must be looked after, and there are so many things to do. So the note is written and sent off at once.
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 41)
CHAPTER IV.
We have just finished breakfast. Mrs. Mar- shall only had my note last night, but she has come already, and is waiting in the drawing- room to see me. Probably she knows of some one likely to do as a nurse.
" I have had your note, and thought I had better come and see what could be done."
She says it grimly, as if she had resented my writing to her, but thought it her duty to help me. Her eyes look very round, her nose is very pointed, and she has brushed her grey hair back so tightly that her face looks harder than ever ; her manner is cold, as it always is. I feel half afraid of her as she sits staring me in the face.
VOL. I. 4
50 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
*^ It was a great shame to trouble you "
"Not at. all. Only, unluckily, I do not know of any one just now, but I will inquire." There is a silence for a minute, and then she goes on. " I came to see if you would trust the cliildren to me in the daytime, as the nurse is gone. You must have a great deal to do."
" To you ? " I say, half bewildered.
" I am very fond of children." She says it so harshly, and looks at me with her eyes so wide open that I am as much frightened as astonished, and forget to answer at alL '^ It is a great trouble to me that I have none of my own," she adds hurriedly ; and the tears come suddenly into her eyes and trickle down her cheeks, but she does not seem to be con- scious of her own distress. Hardly knowing what to do, I go a step nearer. As if she did not know it, she puts out her hand to push me back. She is a woman whom caresses rather annoy. I wonder what to say, and am afraid of saying anything.
MUS. KEITH'S CHIME, 51
*^ It is very kind — " I begin.
" Perhaps they would not like to come to me," she says sharply ; and I fear that this is the truth.
It would be a great comfort to have a free time in which to pack and get ready, but Molly will certainly never consent to go, even for a few hours. Perhaps Jack would, and Molly is always content to lie on a sofa, or to be propped up in the corner of one, and look at a picture-book.
" The children are shy," I say hesitatingly.
" You would not be afraid to trust them to me ? " she asks suspiciously.
" Oh no, no, indeed," I answer quickly, and this is time enough. Somehow I feel, too, that if she were alone with the children she would not be ashamed of being a little tender with them. Perhaps she is only hard and cold to grown-up folk, or chooses to pretend to be so. If we could look into people's hearts there would be a vast number of surprises for us.
"Perhaps you do not like to be without
52 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
them?" she remarks, in a polite and frigid manner. '* But it might be more comfortable for them if they came to me while you are busy, and I would try to find them some amusement."
" Oh no, no," I answer quickly, feeling as if I had been reproved. All the time I am quite aware that I hate the thought of Molly being away all day.
"I will bring them back by four in the afternoon, and I could fetch them every morning."
" It is very kind of you," I begin once more, but she looks so hard I have not the courage to go on, or to say that I fear she will frighten them out of their wits. I remember Jack asking me once why she had such round eyes.
" Suppose we see what the children say to the idea ?" she suggests ; and they are sent for.
Molly runs up to me instantly. Jack hesitates for a moment, and then, in a busi- ness-like way, follows his sister to my side.
" Would you like to go home with me ? "
MRS. KEITH'S. CRIME. 53
Mrs. Marshall asks. *^ I would take you back in the carriage, and on the way we would stop and buy some toys."
Jack is interested, but does not move. Molly shrinks from the idea, and creeps up closer and holds me tight.
" There is a snow-white kitten at my house ; don't you think you would like to come and play with it ? " she adds.
" "Wouldn't you, Molly darling ? " I whisper ; but she only shudders and clings closer.
" Oh no," she says, shaking her head ; " can't leave mummy."
'* But Mrs. Marshall will bring you back this afternoon, my pet," I say, meanly thankful in my heart that she will not go, for it is evident that nothing will tempt her away from me.
" Want to stay with you," she whispers, and there is no moving her.
Jack, however, is evidently wavering ; Mrs. Marshall's gravity impresses him, he feels that what she says may be depended on. He
54 MBS. KEITH'S CBIME.
rubs his round, rosy cheek against mine, and says condescendingly —
*' I don't mind going for a little while, but 1 shall want to come back to mother soon."
It is a great relief. It had seemed so un- gracious to refuse her kindness altogether. Mrs. Marshall tries to follow up her advantage.
*^ And won't you come too, if Jack does ? " she asks Molly. But Molly only shakes her head again, and stands by me stoutly. " Per- haps Jack would like to go to the Zoo, then, if Molly won't come. It would have fatigued her too much."
'^ I should like to go to the Zoo," Jack says, the delights of dissipation opening out before him.
"Perhaps he will stay a few days and be content," Mrs. Marshall suggests, when Jack has gone to be made ready. " There is a little room he can sleep in next to mine. 1 will telegraph if he is quite happy at the thought of staying. In two or three days you may have found a niu'se."
MRS. KEITirS CHIME. 55
So Jack goes oflf with Mrs. Marshall. He looks so pretty as he starts* He wears his little velvet suit, and, fearing lest he should feel chilly in an open carriage, Mrs. Marshall ties a blue silk handkerchief round his throat. " I brought it for Molly, thinking it would suit her," she says, in an apologetic voice. It suits Jack too, and my heart swells with pride as I look at him. He throws his arms round my neck, and then round Molly's, who has been watching him with admiration, not unmixed with awe, and then he runs gaily down the steps. He turns and shouts to me —
"Mummy dear, let Molly have my best paint-box, if she likes. She won^t hurt it. Give her a good big painting rag, and tell her to wash the brushes well.'*
Unselfish little Jack, with the dash of practical common sense in him ! Mrs. Marshall ffets into the carriaore after him, and weaves her hand to me. There is a smile upon her face ; she looks almost happy.
" Ah, poor dear," I think, as I watch them
56 MnS. KEITH'S CRIME.
out of sight ; '* there was a mother's love in your heart, and never a little one came to fetch it."
Then I go into the house and shut the door. It is very quiet without Jack. I realize that instantly, though Jack is not always in the house, nor always making a noise. How odd and still the place seems; Molly and I look at each other, and I know that we both feel lonely.
*^ Come and kiss me, mother,'' she says, and she clings to me, whispering, "You'll let me be with you all day, won't you ? "
I take her in my arms and sit down with her, trying to clear my head of cobwebs, and to think over an idea that came to me this morning. When I said that we had no relations I meant that we had no near or intimate ones. We have some cousins, but, with one exception, I do not even know their addresses, and have never beheld them. The exception lives in London ; she is married and well off. We used to know each other a little years ago ; she some-
MRS. KEITH'S CRIME. 57
times went to see my father, but after he died we ceased to meet. She seemed to resent my marriage, because it was not a good one from a worldly point of view. The idea that has presented itself is that, after all, I will tell Alice Grey (what a pretty name it is) of the trouble that has come upon me. She is my cousin ; why should I feel so certain of her want of sympathy ?
" Molly, would you like to go out with mother ? '' I ask. She brightens at the words ; and so an hour later we are looking our best, as folk who go to see their grand relations should ; and drive in a hansom tx) Harley Street. Mrs, Grey is at home ; we are shown into the drawing-room, and sit wp^iting for her, trying to forget that we are uncertain of our welcome. Oh dear, I think, as I look round at all the handsome things in the room, if these things were only ours, or even half of them were ours, I would sell them, and therie would be no more dijBficulty about the money, and we would start on our journey south to-morrow.
58 MBS. KEITH* S CRIME.
" How do you do, Margaret ? " Mrs. Grey- says, and shakes hands, and very formally kisses me. " How do you do, dear ? " to Molly, and she pats her cheek and sits down. We talk a little formal talk, and a quarter of an hour passes, and Mrs. Grey looks a little bored. I ask to sec her children, and two pretty, well-behaved mites ^re brought in. As they leave the room, I ask if Molly may go back to the nursery for ten minutes. It is odd that she has not noticed that Molly looks ill. *' Oh yes,'' she says, " Molly shall go to the nursery for ten minutes; and then I must send you away,'' she adds, "for I have some people coming to luncheon."
" Oh yes, we must go," I answer. " I have a great deal to do. I came to tell you," I say, when Molly has gone, "that Dr. Finch says Molly must winter abroad. She is very delicate — very ; she is threatened with — with what killed dear mother." It is said calmly, thank goodness.
" How very trying," she says.
MI^S. KEITH'S CBIME. 5&
'* Yes, it is very tryiDg," I say drearDy.
" I am sure it is/' she answers.
" If Arthur had been alive " I begin
vaguely, not knowing how to go on.
"It was a pity that your marriage turned out so badly," she says, in a sympathetic voice.
" It did not turn out badly,'' I say, lifting up my head. "If Arthur had lived he would have been a great artist ; there was the making of one in him."
"And of course you would have been very badly off if you had remained single, for poor Uncle Robert's pension died with him.''
" I had other offers besides dear Arthur's," I say, rather indignantly, and not from any wish to boast, but because it seems rather insulting to Arthur to suppose that he married a girl no* one else could have cared about, and to me to- suppose that I married him for any reason except the right one. " I married him because we loved each other, and money isn't every-
60 3fRS, KEITH'S CRIME.
thing." I am getting incoherent, but it docs not matter.
" What I mean is, that I always think it is a pity to marry a man who has nothing to settle on you," she explains, as if she were in the habit of marrying at least once a year her- self, and knew all about it. " Then, too," she continues, " I think it is a pity to marry a man who has no relations. If anjrthing happens they are bound to look after you, to a certain extent."
'*Not more than one's own relations, surely ? " I say, rather astonished at the busi- ness-like eyes with which she looks at marriage all round.
'^ Oh yes, dear," she answers sweetly and softly. '^ When a woman marries, she belongs to her husband and to his people a great deal more than to any one else. I always feel that ; indeed, I feel it so strongly that I consider myself bound to do a great deal more for my husband's family than for any member of my own. But tell me, w^here are you going ? " she
MES. KEITH'S CBIME. 61
says suddenly, thinking, perhaps, that she has given me a hint that may prevent possible trouble for the future.
^* I don't know," I answer ; *' it is not settled. '*
" Of course, most people go to the Riviera ; but it is fashionable and expensive."
"And we should be out of place among fashionable people."
" Yes, dear," she says compassionately, as if we were beggars, and went about in rags and tags, with packs on our backs. For some un- known reason, Alice Grey is making me angry,
"Malaga is a good place, I am told," she says, much more pleasantly, as if to make amends. "The Vincents are going to winter there this year. Some friends of theirs rave about it, and say it is the best climate in Europe. That might do for you, Margaret ; Spain would be an interesting country to see."
" It is a long w\ay off."
"And for that reason it may be cheap."
There is something in that, and I should like to see Spain.
€2 MRS. KEITH'S CniME.
" I wonder if many English go there ? " '* It is a health -place, so probably they do." '^ I want to paint some portraits, if possible, while we are away; it would help with ex- penses. I fear I should not get inuch to do at Malaga."
" It is impossible to say, of course ; " and her voice is a shade more distant. I understand why : she is determined to have nothing to do with our arrangements. Perhaps she is afraid of my trying to borrow, so I promptly relieve Jier mind.
'* It is a great comfort that uncle Clement left us some money, or wintering abroad would have been impossible."
" Of course it would," she answers cordially. She is evidently a good deal relieved. "Per- haps," she adds graciously, " if you do go to Malaga, you might like to know the Vincents. They are very pleasant people. And, by the way, I think you used to know Ealph Bicknell very weU. You and he were children together, were you not % "
MES. KEITH'S CRIME. 63
" Oh yes, we knew each other very well," I answer, and straightway think of his pinches. '' AVhat about him ? "
" He is always supposed to be sweet on May Vincent, if he is ever sweet on any one except himself ; but, as it has been going on for a long time, and nothing has come of it yet, it is probably all nonsense."
" What is he like ? " I ask.
"Oh, he is rather good-looking, and — and "
" Conceited ? " I suggest, thinking of her previous remark.
" No, not exactly ; but he rather gives him- self airs, as if he thought himself an important person, and he is very fond of snubbing people."
The description makes me laugh. It is just what Ealph used to be, and yet there was a fascination about him. I wonder if it exists
stm.
'^I should like to see him again," I say curiously. " It is so odd to hear of him after all these years."
64 MBS. KEITH'S CBIME.
" Well, probably you will see him if you go to Malaga, for I heard that he was going there with the Vincents. I suppose they like him. I think he is a very disagreeable person my- self, and I believe he dislikes me. Luckily, tastes diflfer. But I am afraid I must send you away, Margaret," she says, in an apologetic tone, and looking at her watch. " If you do go to Malaga, and come across the Vincents, remember me to them. Good-bye, dear." She kisses Molly, who has been sent for, and kisses me, and forgets to say that she hopes it will do Molly good to winter south — forgets everything, except that she is very anxious to get rid of us.
MBS. KEITH'S CBIME. 65
CHAPTER V.
Everything looks so bright and hopeful this morning that even the remembrance of our visit to Alice Grey only amuses me. Last evening Molly sat on my lap till long after her bed-time, listening while I sang to her and thought the while of my own mother, who sang to me long years ago, and now is sleeping far away in the country churchyard. Molly, my little child, I wonder if you in your turn will some day sit and sing to your little ones when I too am taking my rest ? There is nothing on this green earth left that could make me so happy as to know that. While I was still singing, a note came from Mrs. Marshall, following up the telegram she had sent earlier, saying that Jack was so
YOL. I. 5
GG MRS. KEITH'S CRIME.
happy that she had kept him. He had been to the Zoo, and to-morrow was going to Kich- mond with her ; the drive would do him good, and he would enjoy the run over the green in the park. Of course he will, dear little Jack ; and how rosy he will look, running about under the trees. It is very kind of Mrs. Marshall to keep him, especially as no new nurse has appeared. Nurse's daughter has scarlet fever, and has it very badly, poor girl. The land- lady of the house had had it and concealed it. What a wicked thing to do, and what a narrow escape Jack has had.
This morning I am going to take Molly again to Dr. Finch, and afterwards mean to go to Chancery Lane, to get over my interview with Mr. Beccles. I am very cheerful about both visits. Molly looks so much better, per- haps Dr. Finch will say there is no necessity to go abroad, after all.
This hope is soon dashed to the ground. The great doctor examines her very carefully, and sits watching me while I put on her
MRS. KEITH'S CHIMK 67
wraps afterwards. He waits till she has gone home with the housemaid before he speaks.
"Do you think you really can manage to take her away for the winter, Mrs. Keith ? " He puts the question in this considerate form, for he knows my position and circumstances.
" Yes, I can manage it, if it is necessary," I answer resolutely, determined that nothing «hall stand in the way, if going is likely to make her well.
"It is necessary. It may save her; but remember, I don't say that it will," he says gently.
" Is she so very ill ? " I ask. My heart seems to be getting stone cold, but my voice is firm.
" She is in a very critical condition. It is possible that change of climate may save her. I have more faith in that than in anything else."
" Where shall we go ? "
"Have you any friends in the south of France whom you could be near ? "
68 MBS. KEIIWS CRIME.
*' No, none/' I answer. " I have heard of some people, friends of a cousin's, going to Malaga. Would that do ? "
" Excellent. It is one of the best climates in Europe, and there is a good English doctor there. Let me see, what is he called ? Murray — Dr. Murray. I should not have sent you so far, but you could not go to a better place."
" Then we will go there ; " and I get up.
" Take heart," he says kindly, " and try to make up your mind that 8he will get well, for that is something towards it."
I look up at him and try to speak, but my lips seem to have lost their power. We shake hands, and frozen and dazed and strange, I start for Chancery Lane. How odd it is. I am like another person again, carrying my old self about like a puppet. It is very interesting to look on at all that she does, and so very strange.
It is twelve o'clock w^hen I get to the lawyer's office. He is engaged, but will see
MES. KEITH'S CRIME. 69
me if I will wait for lialf an hour. So I wait, while my courage ebbs away behind the ad- vertisement sheet of the Times, and the clerks scratch away at their desks. Perhaps it is the squeaking of their quills that aflfects my nerves, or the naked ugliness of the room, or the row of tin boxes on the shelves opposite, with the owners' names painted on them in hard white letters ; I don't know, but when I enter the room consecrated to Mr. Beccles and private interviews, I can scarcely drag one foot after the other.
" How do you do, Mrs. Keith ; how do you do ? Sit down ; " and he looks at me in- quiringly.
" How do you do ? " and I sit down. " I came to see you the other day, but you were away." There is nd object in telling him this, except to gain time.
" I am so sorry ; it was a long way to come. I trust it was not anything very important, my dear lady ? "
He is always gentle and sympathetic, but
70 MBS. KEITH'S CFJME.
under the gentle, sympathetic manner one feels that he is cold and hard. It is like a stone wall covered by a coating of soft green moss.
" It was not pressing for the moment, but I am much relieved to see you to-day." There is a lump coming in my throat ; suppose, after all, he refuses to let us have the money ? but he cannot ; it is ours. " I have come to see you on business," I begin rather tamely, and he bows. " My little girl is ill — she is very ill. She is threatened by the same disease that kiUed my mother " — the tears are coming into
my eyes, but I force them back — ^*and "
I can't go on.
" She'll outgrow it, my dear lady, depend upon ifc," he answers feelingly. " So young a child."
*^ I hope so," I say hopelessly ; " but the doctor — Dr. Finch, you know ; I have been to him — says that she must go to a warm climate for the winter ; that it is her only chance, in fact." I stop for a moment, but he is silent. *^And so I want to raise the money to go."
MRS. KEITH'S CRIME. 71
He bows, but does not look encouraging. '* And as you are one of my trustees, I have come to ask you " — oh, how the words stick in my throat, — *^ to — to let us have two hundred pounds of the money uncle Clement left us, or we shall not be able to manage it. I suppose you will not mind ? "
" I don't quite understand," he says, and I explain. " But the trustees have no power to advance it ; it is tied up," he says. " It is quite put of our power. "
" Out of your power ? "
'^ Quite out of our power. The money is settled upon you for life, only the interest is yours. At your death the capital will be your son's. You can't touch your son's property ; it would not be legal."
"But you know that, under the circum- stances, uncle Clement would have wished it ; and when my son is a man he will hate to think that this money could not be used even to save his sister's life."
" Ah yes, my dear lady ; but we have to
72 MRS, KEITH'S CRIME.
abide by the law, which often runs counter to matters of feeling."
**Then that is hopeless/' I say despairingly. "I see what you mean, but it never struck me before."
'^ So few ladies know anything about legal matters," he says benevolently.
I sit still for a moment, turning over in my mind every possible way of getting the money. It is no use selling the things at home ; they certainly would not realize fifty pounds. Suddenly an idea strikes me.
"Would not some one advance us two years' income ? If I could borrow the two hundred pounds, paying back a hundred this year and a hundred next year, and the interest the third year" — somehow the arrangement with the interest in the tail sounds a little lame, biit it would surely be a very safe arrangement, and Mr. Beccles himself, as trustee, would be able to ensure repayment — '*we could borrow it on those terms, perhaps ? ''
"I think not," he says sadly, shaking his
MnS. KEITH'S CRIME. 73
head. " You must forgive my saying it," he goes on, " but I do not believe in going abroad. It is a new-fangled idea, this chasing people out of their own country. If your child is well enough to recover, take care of her, and she will do so at home. If she is unhappily too far gone to get well here, she will not do so in a foreign land."
There is some common sense in what he says ; but for all that, he is no more an authority on medical matters than Dr. Finch is on legal ones. I have had the best advice for Molly, and am bound to follow it, and I struggle hard to answer back in a practical tone, and from the common-sense point of view also.
^^ But whatever even I may think about the matter myself, Mr. Beccles, a great doctor has said that taking her abroad may save her, and I am bound to try it."
He gives his shoulders a Uttle shrug, and says nothing.
''And you think no one — no one would lend us the money ? "
74 MBS. KEITH'S CBIME.
'* I fear not/' he says, as though it grieved him sorely to say it.
" Not if the hundred a year were devoted to- repaying it ? I could do with even less than two hundred, I dare say."
" I fear not," he repeats, in the same com- passionate voice. " It is not as if the money were absolutely your own."
Then I give up hope as far as he is con- cerned, and get up heartsick and indignant, for Mr. Beccles is very rich, and I think of his grand house and the servants and carriages,, and the thousand pounds uncle Clement left him, and the life-long friendship he had shown him. To Mr. Beccles two hundred pounds would not have been a large sum to help the niece of his old friend to borrow. But what i& the use of all this bitterness ? I will go back to Molly.
'^ The world is very selfish," I say sadly.
** It is indeed," he answers, with a sigh, as^ though he and the world were far, far apart.
Suddenly something prompts me to ask,.
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 75
" What will become of the money uncle Clement left if my son dies under age ? "
" It would still, of course, be yours for life, and you would have the disposal of half the capital at your death."
"And if both children die before or after me, but yet under age, what then ? "
" The whole of it would go at your death as you by will direct. You ought to make a will, Mrs. Keith, in case both the children die under age, and yet survive you. It might save complications hereafter."
"Thank you," I say, and remember with a thankful heart that my little son is strong and healthy enough. I wish there was some provision for Molly, but 1 am not likely to die, and am glad enough to work. It seems to me, as I walk back down Chancery Lane, that the only hopeless foe in the world is Death. Sorrow, and sickness, and poverty, and change, and even sin — ^all these things may cost us bitterest pain, but at least they can be fought, and round anv corner of even the darkest road
76 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME,
hope may be lurking or some surprise await- ing us. But Death 1 Never since the world began, and never to the end, will the man be found who can bring the dead to life.
I get home at last, and enter the drawing- room gently. There on the sofa, covered by an Indian blanket, her little face resting on the white pillow, is Molly. In her eyes is a burning brightness, on her cheeks are two red spots ; her lips are crimson, and I know that they are burning too. She half raises her head, and all her dear face lights up.
" Oh, mother," she says, ^' I am so glad you have come back. I thought you never would. I do feel so tired ; I think it was that nasty
?_ "
cab coming from the doctor's.
" My darling,'^ I say, kneeling down by the sofa.
" I wanted to be in your room, and not in the nursery, as Jack is away, so Bessie put me here. You don't mind, do you manmiy dear ? "
" Mind ? " I cry. " Oh, my sweet darling,
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 77
my own little child 1 " and I smother her with wild kisses. She kisses me eagerly back for a minute, and then pushes me away — Molly, who has never before tired of being caressed.
"I can't breathe, mother dear,'* she says, and pushes me still farther away.
" Lie still a little while, my darling," I say, and stagger to the writing-table, and, taking a form from a drawer, write out a telegram : " Please come to me to-day, if possible, at any time convenient to you,'' and direct it to Frederic Cohen, Esq. I ring and send it oflF; and then, while the child is still watching me with her star-like eyes, I walk up and down, wondering what he will say when he gets it, , and where Molly will die, and whether he spells his first name with a h at the end or not, and why I did not merely put the initial, and then I wonder why he is a Jew. What a fool I am, though, for what has that to do with it? and the pain threatens, and I laugh at it, and somehow it vanishes ; and Molly calls to me from the sofa, and I go and put my face
78 MBS. KEITH'S GRIME.
down on her soft hair that is the colour of sunshine — ah, God ! of the sunshine that per- haps will be shining down upon her grave a few months hence. Oh, but I am going mad.
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 79
CHAPTER VL
It is late in the afternoon when Mr. Cohen comes. I hear him drive up in a hansom, and my pulse beats quicker as he knocks at the street door. He looks particularly good- tempered and pleased as he enters ; his manner is a little eager, as if he had unexpectedly gained a difficult point.
" How do you do ? '^ he says, in his most cheerful voice. " Had your telegram all right, you see, and am very sorry I couldn't get away before. Dreadful thing to be a city man, you know. Keeps one busy just when one wants some time to one's self."
*' It is very good of you to come at all," I say. '^ It was very cool to telegraph for you in that way."
80 MJRS. KEITH'S CRIME.
" It was quite right. Well?"
" Well ? " I echo, for I can't speak of what I sent to tell him.
" Is it aU right ? "
" Is what all right ? " I ask.
" Going to be sensible ? " he says, in a kind, manly fashion that reassures me and sets all my doubts at rest. I answer with a little nod, for words fail me. He takes my hand and gives it a good shake. " That's the best way. I knew you were a wise little woman, or I shouldn't have said anything about it. I am only treating you as I should one of my own sisters, so don't go having any more scruples, and that sort of thing. How shall we manage it? Look here, I'll pay it into your bankers if you'U tell me where. They'll think it's a commission, and the price of pictures gone up."
Then I find a voice, and tell him of my visit to Mr. Beccles. It rather amuses him»
"Of course he couldn't advance you any money, if it is tied up on the boy," he says ; " it would be a felony, or something. Fancy
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 81
trying to incite a respectable lawyer to commit a felony, and get himself put into prison I "
" Then I wondered if I were to sell the things here, to help, at any rate, towards expenses, — '' I begin.
"Get nothing for them, and have to start again when you come back." ^
Then I explain that I am only going to borrow two hundred, and shall repay that out of the hundred a year, fifty pounds a year at least, until it is paid ofi* ; and that I am going to make a will to try and secure the money to him as far as I can in case of my death. He laughs, and seems to be vastly amused.
" All right," he says ; " but well make it four hundred, and then I shall be able to dun you a little longer. You really can't do it for less; .couldn't do it myself on that, and youTl have the children and maids and people."
" I don't travel with a regular suite."
"Don't you?" he laughs. "Well, we'll make it four hundred. I like having my way,
VOL. 1. 6
82 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
SO that's settled. Don't let's talk of it any more. Money affaii-s are always awkward, you know. Are you going to give me some tea
agam j
?"
The things have been brought in, but I had forgotten all about making it.
" I am so^stupid to-day," I apologize.
" Never mind," he says consolingly. " Had any more faints since I was here ? "
" No," I answer, trying to laugh ; for the sardine generally looks bored if one is not a little bit lively. Besides, it is a great relief to know that the money is settled. I had not realized what a load it was on my mind till my friend came and lifted it. It will not be difficult to pay it off".
" Is the young 'un getting on ? " he asks.
I shake my head, and he avoids the subject.
" Made up your mind where to go ? "
" We are going to Malaga."
"That's a pretty good journey. Why, it's an awful way. What are you going to Malaga for ? "
MliS. KEITH'S CRIME. 83
" The climate is said to be good. There is a clever English doctor there ; and some friends of my cousin's, Mrs. Grey, will be there, and we may possibly know them. It will be interesting to see Spain too. I have always longed to go there."
" Lots of beggars."
" And grandees."
"I never saw any grandees, and don't believe they've got any left. If they have, they keep them done up in dirty cotton wool."
" Why dirty cotton wool ? " I ask, in sur- prise.
'* They have nothing clean in that country," he says sadly, shaking his head.
" You don't seem to admire the Spaniards."
" No, I don't. We have had some business dealings with them, and know a good deal about them. They really have got a decent climate, though — dry as a bone ; for they cut down all the trees, and do away with the rainfall. You see, they don't want water in that country ; they drink wine, and never
84 MRS. KEITH'S CRIME.
wash themselves. Water is quite useless, so they have abolished it."
" But the ground, at any rate, wants water- ing."
"Not a bit of it. They don't grow any- thing except prickly pears. Nothing there but acres and acres of barren land. It never wants watering any more than the people."
" It does not sound as if it will be a good place for us,'' I say, in surprise.
" Oh yes, it will ; it has a wonderful climate,'' he says, as he drinks his tea. " Much better than the Kiviera, or any of those places. There's never any telling at what moment a wind may turn up on the Eiviera and nip the life out of you. Spain is the best place this side the Mediterranean. I dare say you'll be able to do some painting there. Plenty of
English By the way, how are you going
to get there ? "
"I don't know. It has only just been settled that we are to go. I have not thought about routes yet."
MRS. KEITH'S CHIME. 85
" It's an awfully long journey by rail."
"Well, we can't go by sea/'
" It would be a bore ; but an idea has just struck me. You might get through very com- fortably to Marseille, and go on from there by sea. Very short journey ; much easier than going by rail. There are some English boats from Marseille that call at Malaga on their way home. They stop there once a week, and I could write to our people, and tell them to look after you."
" I don't understand ; " but I remember that the sardine is a merchant, and has dealings with foreign countries ; the boats have probably something to do with his business. He explains.
" You see, we have branch places out in the East, and so have a considerable interest in some boats that do our fetching and carry- ing between Bordeaux and places farther oflF. They are very comfortable, used to passengers, generally have a good many. Went in one of them myself once, so know all about it. I'll
86 MRS. KEITH'S CRIME.
write them a line to Marseille, to say they are to look after you and take you on to Malaga, — charge you nothing, of course. A clear saving that, and pleasant way of getting there."
" It would be very nice,'' I say gratefully. "You have been a good friend to us, Mr. Cohen. What should we have done without you ? I should have died, I think."
" Well, djdng wouldn't have helped much ; rather the other way, in fact," he answers. " It's lucky I met Mrs. Marshall that day, or I shouldn't have known anything about it. That would have been very bad luck."
" For me, yes, indeed," I answer ; for I have put all my scruples away, and, more thankful than words can tell for the sardine's generosity, give myself up to such comfort in it as I may find.
"I meant for me ; wasn't thinking of you just then," he laughs.
"Very, very much worse luck for me," I say gaily, doing my best to be lively.
MRS. KEITH'S CRIME. 87
"Well, we won't nag at each other about it," he answers.
" It seems such an amazing thing Oh,
but I was going to say a very rude thing indeed."
** What was it ? Kather like rude things."
" I was going to say that one does not expect a Jew to be so generous as you have been to me. He has the reputation of taking care of himself and his own people, but of being, in regard to others, very — very "
But the sardine, who is never offended at plain speaking, answers quickly, with a certain pride of race in his voice.
" If a Jew considers himself really to be your friend and you his, then he thinks himself bound to do anything he can for you ; that is, if you are up a real tree, and don't make too much fuss. A Jew hates a fuss. If you are merely in a bush, and could get out again if you liked and really tried, and are merely crying out to amuse yourself, then the Jew passes on, and thinks time and money too valuable to waste on you."
88 MRS. KEITH'S CRIME.
" I quite understand. It is a right principle.'*
" And then," the sardine continues, " a Jew always considers himself bound to look after women and children as far as he can ; that is, his own womenfolk, or the womenfolk of his friends."
" It is a great comfort for the women. It just occurs to me that I never heard of a Jewess going in for woman's rights."
" Oh no," he says, shaking his head ; *^ our women never do that kind of thing. They are too well educated and taken care of, and they know when they are well oflf."
" And so they don't want * rights ' ? "
" Oh no," he answers solemnly. '^ They are very well oS. as they are, and they know it. We never expect our women to be dummies, and we know they are not fools, and we always consult them about things that concern them ; that's all they want, you know."
" And then, you are proud of them. I have so often noticed that."
"Of course we are proud of them. We
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 89
ought to be ; for you can't match them. That's why we like taking them about with us, instead of leaving them at home ; besides, we think women have as much right to enjoy themselves and go about as men. That's what your people don't seem to see, and then the women cry out. You don't understand that a woman likes being treated properly and yet taken care of at the same time."
" And you do understand it," I say.
" Yes, we do ; and we know that we can do with fewer things than women can, and we take care that they get more accordingly. On the whole, our women have a very good time."
" And don't you think ours have ? "
" Some of you ; some of you haven't ; " and he gets up and walks about the room, looking at the things again. He stops before the picture on the easel. " I don't think anything of that picture," he says ; " don't believe any dealer in London would give you ten pounds for it."
90 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
" Don't abuse it. It was so kind of him to give it to me/'
"I like this little thing much better," he says, going up to Edith Clark's little painting.
Suddenly an idea strikes me. *^Let me give it to you," I say eagerly. " I should so like you to have it ; do take it ; " and I try to put it into his hands, but he pushes it away.
"Oh no; wouldn't take it for the world. Why, you refused twenty pounds for it."
" I know, but I should so like to give it to
you."
"Can't be done," he says, shaking his head. "It looks so well where it is. You mustn't go wanting to give away your valuables like that."
" Oh, but think of all you have done for me. It would please me so if you would have it, Mr. Cohen." But he shakes his head again.
" You shall leave it to me in that wonderful will you are going to make," he says ; " then, when you are about to chump up, it will be
MUS. KEITH'S CBIME, 91
a comfort to you to know that I am going to get it."
*^ m give it to you for a wedding gift when you get married."
"Very well. You'll have to wait a good while first.*'
" I am sorry for that," I say.
He looks quite pleased. "Oh, come, now, don't begin about that. Every one is always at me. You women are never content unless you are match-making."
" I think you ought to be married," I say, with all my heart. " You would be so good to your wife, and she would be very proud of you."
" Don't see what she would have to be proud of," he says ; but there is something in his voice that almost tells one that he is thinking of his balance at his banker s with satisfaction, and reflecting that it isn't such a bad thing to be proud of, after all.
"But, really," I say earnestly, for I know that he likes to be asked about it, "why don't you get married ? "
92 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
"Never see any one I care quite enough about. There was a little girl once who might have done ; but she didn't seem to see it, so I cleared off."
" Why didn't she see it ? "
" I don't know ; I thought she did at first. She had an unfortunate relation in the shape of an aunt, who objected to me — had larger views, I think, so I left her to contemplate them. Ti^at aunt was too much of a mill- stone for any girl's neck. She was a nice little girl" — and he almost sighs — "nice, gentle little thing'; would have suited me down to the ground."
" Perhaps it will come all right yet."
" Oh no ; just as well it shouldn't. After all, you know, it's a fearful business getting married."
" Yes, it is ; but there's nothing in this wide world like it if you get the right person."
"And there's nothing in this wide world like it if you get the wrong one," he laughs. ^' I must go, Mrs. Keith. You won't start for
MBS. KEITH'S CBIME. 93
another week or two, I expect. I am going to Scotland for ten days or so, but I shall come and see you before you start. I am very glad we have made up our little differences. I'll make it all right about — about that." He shrinks from even naming the money, the good, kind sardine, though he has written down the name of the bank in his pocket-book. " m write to Marseille, and tell them they are to look after my aunt and her family w^hen they turn up, and take them on to Malaga."
" Your aunt ? "
" Yes ; my aunt or cousins or something like that, you know. There's nothing like a capacity for lying to a moderate extent — so useful. Let me see, now ; any other business ? Oh, ril find out what day the boat gets there, and drop you a line, and you can start accord- ingly. It would be a great bore for you to be staying too long at Marseille."
"Why, Mr. Cohen, you seem to have adopted us. I wish I understood business as well as you do, and could arrange things." I
94 MES. KEITH'S CRIME.
sigh. I am getting very tired, and long to be with my little child again."
" A good thing you can't," he says ferv'^ently. " I hate business women myself, and always leave them to take care of themselves. I like women to be clever and suggestive and full of resources, and plucky, and a trifle helpless;" and, having explained his views regarding women to his own satisfaction, the sardine departs, and as the door closes I fly up the nursery stairs, and taking Molly in my arms, walk up and down the room with her. It is very quiet without Jack. He has been gone these two days, and all the house seems to be aching for a sight of him.
What a comfort it is to sit down and think over the sardine's kindness. I have no longer any feeling about borrowing the money, except that of being very grateful to him, and a sense of safety at knowing that I have a friend in the world so staunch and generous. I like to think of his manner to-day, of the happiness it gave him to help us, of the
MBS. KEITH* 8 CRIME. 95
delicacy with which he avoided talking of it more than he could help, and how he seemed to shrink from even mentioning the word "money." At heart he is just a perfect gentleman, whatever he may choose to make his manner ; I am glad to have taken his help, and am proud of it.
After Molly is in bed I pack up a little parcel for nurse, and Amte and implore the dear old careless soul not to come until she has leave. Then I sit down with a drawer full of children's clothes before me, and begin to look over and mend them before packing them into a travelling-case. Now that nurse has gone there are so many extra things to do. It is rather nice to mend Jack's clothes, the bonnie, sturdy little sonnie ; all his pockets are torn. I long to see his face again ; perhaps I shall get another little note from Mrs. Marshall presently, though one came this morning, full of praise and little anecdotes about him. Just these few hours since the money business has been settled there has
96 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
I
been a little lull in the storm, as if, with the means of trying the one thing that would do Molly good, a half-promise from some strange power had come that she should get well. It is very odd, but it seems lately as if with Molly's illness more strength had come to me, so that I can see and hear and feel more acutely, and my hands long to touch the brushes again. Perhaps out of one strong feeling another is growing, and in the future my hands will do better work than they have yet done. A thousand things suggest them- selves all at once, and I long to be at work, and feel that I could work well. The thought of the sardine's goodness will help me; the debt shall soon be paid: and yet I shall be almost sorry when it is ; it is nice to have so generous a creditor.
There is a double knock at the street door. The sound half amuses me. It is a shy, half- frightened knock; probably a nurse applying for the place, for I do not know any one likely to come at this hour of the eveniug. I think
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME, 97
quickly of Molly sleeping above, and hastily kiss the hole in Jack's sleeve, and go to the room door and listen. There is some one speaking in a low voice.
" No, I will not come in," I hear, as with a heart that suddenly stands still I recognize the hard but broken tones ; " ask Mrs. Keith if she will come out and speak to me." It is Mrs. Marshall. Oh, what does it mean t Jack
VOL. I.
96 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
CHAPTER VII.
The morning light is coming once again. I can see the tops of the houses opposite, and the trees are no longer a confused mass in the darkness, but are green and almost separate. This is the third night that I have walked up and down, wondering if in the morning I should still be sane. If I might only be with him and nurse him and watch him, and see each change, each hope and fear that comes and goes, then I could be calm and silent and show no sign. But here alone, away from him, with the caged feeling, the doors closed between him and me — between me and the room in which he lies and calls for me perhaps, and longs for me, and yet no mother is there with him — here away from him I have no control. If I could
MBS. KEITETS CBIME. 99
only keep my wild heart still and take things calmly as some women do who perhaps love as weU as I. But no, but no, these little ones are all I have ; the touch of their little hands goes through me, and every nerve answers to the sound of their voices or the sight of their faces. Oh but to keep them ! To live and bear the cruellest pain, to slave day and night and know no rest, to be cut off from everything and <every one, yet keep these little ones, and I would be satisfied ; or if death must come, let it come to me. To die the saddest, loneliest death I would find sweet, if only they might grow up and be strong and find good life in the world.
Jack has scarlet fever ; they doubt if he can live. Oh, nurse, will you ever forgive your- self ? Even in the midst of all my misery I am sorry for you, poor soul.
He is at Mrs. Marshall's still. They have been goodness itself, and he has had the best of doctors and of nurses, and everything that money could do or love devise ; but I have not
100 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
seen him, they will not let me, and it is driving me mad. They say I might take it, or give it to Molly, but I am not incautious like nurse. They say I could do him no good, but ah ! he'll dia I know it. I crept to the door at twelve o'clock last night to ask how he was, and to beg them to let me in. He was no better ; that is what they always say — no better. To-day I must see him ; I must indeed. There is a little housemaid here who loves and is very good to Molly, and I will take fresh clothes with me, and walk long miles, and do all the things that are wise to pre- vent infection. Doctors do not take it ; why should I ?
It is getting lighter ; another hour, and I may go to the house and ask again. Sleep on, Molly ; sleep on, my little child* Ah, the blessed hours that children sleep through, while those who love them wake and sorrow ! There is the rocking- horse in the nursery. It kills me to see it, and yet something makes my quaking heart and reluctant feet take me again and again to iiy.
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 101
and I stand and watch it, wondering if some sense of what is coming has crept over i%, and the room, and all that is in it, for there is an air of parting and desolation and sorrow over everything.
"The four-and-twenty sailors that walk about the
decks Are four-and-twenty white mice with chains about
their necks."
It rings in my head as I walk up and down ; I stand still and begin to sing it, but stop with a little cry of fright at my own voice,, and put my hands over my mouth.
It is time at last; I take the portmanteau with the change of clothes, and, kissing Molly gently as she lies sleeping, start for Mrs, Marshall's. How many times I have driven from St. John's Wood to Kensington these last few days 1 Even the streets as I pass along seem sullen and sad and sorry for him.
The servant opens the door gently. My lips refuse to speak, but she knows what I want to ask.
102 MBS. KEITH' 8 CRIME.
" He is just the same," she says. " Will you come in ? "
I have never been admitted before, but now, dazed and wondering, I enter. In a few minutes Mrs. Marshall comes to me in the drawing-room,
" He is just the same," she repeats, in a sad voice, and with a look of misery on her face which I see even in the midst of my own dread.
'^ Let me see him," I plead ; "do let me see him. He is my own child. I cannot bear it. I know how well you mean it; but oh, let me see him, do let me see him."
She takes my hands and forces me back on to the sofa, and, still holding them, speaks.
"You can do no good," she says gently* " You may take it yourself, or give it to the other child."
"But you have seen him. Why should I take it more than you ? "
"And if I do," she answers, in her hard^
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 103
grinding voice, " my life is not so valuable as yours."
" Oh yes ; you have your husband." But she does not answer, and the. words seem to have been spoken into some dreary waste in which they can have no meaning.
" Tell me how he is again," I plead. " Is he any better ? " She holds my hand stiU more tightly and answers.
" I must not deceive you, my poor dear ; he is not any better." .....
They let me see him. ... I took him in my arms and kissed him. ... I think he knew me; then he said, "Where is mother? I do want mother so. Where's mummy ? " . . . oh. Jack ... oh. Jack. . . .
^ « ^ « «
So many times lately I have thought that it would be very lonely for him sleeping out there all alone in the stillness and darkness, and we far away. How cruel it seemed to go and leave him ! But now Jack is with him. Ah,
104 MRS. KEITH'S CRIME.
my little son, how good it must be to be there ; and how soundly you will sleep on through all the ages. If I were only with you. . . . But there is Molly. . . .
MRS. KEITH'S CRIMH. 105
CHAPTER VIII.
Did you ever sit alone after some terrible storm in your life had passed and left you blankly staring the future in the face, half wondering, half doubting that you were living still, and think sadly over your old day-dreams? — the things that years ago you had meant to do in the happy days to come, things that seemed as if they would be so easy and pleasant, and so certain to wait on time and opportunity? I sit thinking over my old dreams this after- noon, here in the little di'awing-room once more. To-morrow we start for Malaga, MoUy and I. I wonder when we shall return, or if either of us will? This house is let to a young married couple. He is an artist. It is rather a comfort to me that he is ; it seems natural
106 MJRS. KEITH'S CRIME,
that he should come to live and work here. They both appeared to like the little bits of rubbish about the place — the sketches, and the pots and pans and plants ; but they did not appreciate the poor picture on the easel any more than the sardine did. Yet to me it has always been so strangely pathetic, and now I seem to know what it all means. It dawned upon me while the little bride and her husband were here the other day, going through the rooms with merry laughter, thinking how cosy they would be in our little home.. They laughed at the rocking-horse, and the bride stroked it, and said it was a *' dear big beast," like one she had had at home, and then they both laughed ; and while they were laughing, I was forcing back my tears, and listening to a voice, the merriest voice that ever mother's heart answered to, singing —
" The four-and-twenty sailors that walk about the decks."
When they had made their arrangements, in the careless, happy-go-lucky fashion of youth
MES. KEITH'S CRIME. 107
and belief in the world, and had gone away, then I sat thinking of the picture, as I had many times before. Now I understood it, and knew what the dead people sleeping over the hill had looked like; how they had laughed, and cried, and hoped, and sorrowed ; and how thankful they had been to lay their heads down at last. The waves had gone on dashing over the shingly beach year after year towards the garden wall ; the seaweed had been heaped up here and there higher and higher, and then the pitiful sea took it back again ; and farther up I saw the flowers dying, and heard the last hum of birds and bees, and knew when the swallows had journeyed south, and quiet and silence and forgetfulness reigned over all, and the tired ones slept soundly. But now all was changing. The birds were singing again, and the sun shining, and soon the flowers would bloom, and all around would be alive and happy, "bright with a summer to be." But the sleepers over the hill would know nothing and care nothing ; for what would it matter
108 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
to them to whom nothing would matter more?
"AVe will take it for a couple of years, if you like, Mrs. Keith/' the husband said, as he followed his bride out of the house; so we may be wanderers for as long as we please.
Only a year ago — nay, less, last winter — I sat many a long hour thinking how happy the children should be as they grew up, what merry days they should have to remember, to what bright ones they should look forward. It is a good thing to have a happy childhood : it keeps the heart green through all after troubles ; it sends a little perpetual current of youth through a whole life. My children should have this at least. It seemed such a blessed thing to have these two little lives, and I used to think that if I brought them up to be good and true and pure and above all selfishness, it would be good work enough. For every woman who gives to the world even one sweet woman or one good citizen, has
MRS. KEITH'S CBIME, 109
given it something in return for all it has given her. So many plans I made in Aose happy dreaming hours, thinking how in the long evenings I would tell them fairy stories, till quite gradually they learnt to like best to hear stories that were true ; and then, just as Mazzini advised mothers to do in the twilight hour, I would tell them stories ^^of great men who had worked and loved the people." It has been something to imagine their little upturned faces, and to see by the firelight the eagerness in their eyes. . . .
But it is useless to go over it all, and I must not break down, for there are many things to do yet, and at nine o'clock to-morrow morning we start. The sardine was coming to say good-bye, but telegraphed just now that he was prevented, and would meet us at the station in tl;ie morning to see us off; so one of the two people who have been so kind to us will see the last of us, and the other is coming this afternoon.
Mr. Beccles wrote after Jack died, and said
110 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
he could raise the money now that a reasonable security was possible. But I felt that Mr. Cohen would be sorely disappointed if his help were, after all, not taken; so I refused Mr. Beccles, and felt some satisfaction in doing it. I have made the will at which the sardine laughed, and left him the little picture he liked, and arranged for the repayment of the debt ; and then, if Molly does not survive me or dies under age, all there is will be divided between the only two friends we possessed in the world..
All this I have been thinking over, sitting here waiting for Mrs. Marshall. The door opens at last, and she enters. She wears a black gown ; the lines in her face are softened ; the tones of her voice are different.
'^ I am almost afraid to come," she says ; but I knew that before she spoke. " It must be so painful to you to see me."
'^ It makes me think, of course, of painful things ; but it is a great comfort to see you. I have been longing for you ; " and this is
i
ec
cc
MRS. KEITH'S CRIME. Ill
true ; I have indeed. Can I ever forget how good she was to Jack, how gentle and how tender? I would give anything to put my arms round her neck and sob my heart out on her shoulder, and to feel that she was not only sorry for me, but loved me just a little bit. But that will never be.
And you really start to-morrow ? " Yes ; to-morrow morning.''
" And you are quite sure that it is wise to go alone, without a nurse or maid of any kind ? "
" Oh yes,'' I answer. " I have always waited on myself, and I should not let any one else wait on Molly. One child and two hands; surely they are enough. They can do every- thing for her. It would have been different if "
" I know," she says hastily. " How is MoUy ? "
" She is just the same."
" She will be better soon. Climate does so much."
*^ Sometimes I think it will do nothing for
112 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
her," I answer doggedly, " and that it is folly to go."
"You must not say that," she answers gently. "Be thankful that you can go. So many see their dear ones die, thinking that some things they could not get would have saved them."
The force of this comes home to me keenly. "I know," I answer quickly, "and am only too thankful that we are able to go ; after a little while when I am used to — shaving Molly alone, I shall be brave again^ Overmuch happiness has spoilt me for sorrow, and made me impatient; but I shall be better soon. It is a terrible thing to be bom with a great capacity for happiness, and to feel that one has hardly had one's share;" and I try to laugh, and fail.
She is silent for a few minutes, and then she asks, in a sad, broken voice, "Did your husband love you, my dear ? "
" Oh yes, yes," I cry, " with all his heart."
" As you did him ? ''
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 113
"As I did him," I answer, trembling with eagerness and passionate remembrance. She sits still, watching me wearily and wonderingly.
" And you had your children when he was here ? " she asks, with a long-drawn sigh.
" Yes ; there was little Jack. He was such a pretty baby ; we have laughed for joy as we watched him "
" And MoUy ? "
" And Molly was coming ; there was the hope of her, the looking forward. Oh, it was perfect."
She takes my hands, just as she did on that morning a month ago, and looks me sadly in the face, and in her eyes I see a blank hope- lessness that drives my own sorrow out of my heart, and leaves it full of compassion for hers.
"Then, be satisfied," she says gently ; "you have had your share. If you had only pos- sessed all you have had for a single hour, you would have had your share. Be thankful for that. There are many women with capacity as great as yours for happiness, who are hungry
VOL. I. 8
114 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
for it all their lives, and yet are never satisfied for a single hour."
I look at her silently, while the tears slowly gather in her eyes. Now I understand all her coldness and silence, the hard lines, the almost grim voice, and all that had seemed half resentful in her before. I cannot speak, only we look at each other — she who remembers so little, and I who remember so much.
" There are some things worse than death," she says, as the tears roll down her cheeks ; and I stoop and kiss her hands and whisper —
"Yes, you are right. Oh, forgive me, and I will cry out no more."
"Ah, my dear, it is hard to keep one's mouth shut when the blow falls ; but remem- ber that to bear silently is to show that you think even your bitterest woe not too great a price to pay for your past happiness. You would not have refused to bear the sorest pain for those you ? "
" Oh no, no ! " I cry.
" And you are bearing this for them. You
Ml^S. KEITH'S CRIME. 115
would not have sorrowed so if you had not loved them. Be thankful that you have had your loved ones to bear your sorrow for." And then she gets up and pulls the cloak round her shoulders. '^ I want to see MoUv," she says ; and I go and fetch Molly from the little room adjoining, where the housemaid has been reading a fairy story aloud.
"Good-bye, little woman," Mrs. Marshall says, in a voice so kind and gentle that Molly looks up and has confidence, and its sweetness catches my ear, and I long to hear her' speak again; and yet her voice is usually so hard. She takes Molly up in her arms, holding her in that longing, half- wondering manner just dashed with fear that is so characteristic of childless women. Then she puts her down, and watches me while I wrap a shawl about my little one, and carry her back to the other room again. She is still standing when I return. She hesitates for a moment, and half doubtfully, half awkwardly, she comes for- ward and kisses me tenderly on both cheeks,
116 MRS. KEITH'S CHIME.
and looks at my face — a long, grave, sad look, as though she thought she might never see it more ; and then she goes. I follow her to the street door, and watch her go down the garden. She turns round at the gate, and says quickly, as if she suddenly remembered some- thing she had forgotten —
" I hope the child will get well. Good-bye.*' She takes yet another last look at me, and so she vanishes, and I go back to the little empty drawing-room and shut the door.
It seems as if we shaU never be ready, as if the night and the things to be done will never come to an end; but at last the morning dawns, and the work is finished, and with one long last look round at the dear little home — the home in which my husband had painted and Jack had played — we depart. The sardine is at the station before us, looking pleased and business-like-
'^ You are in good time. Quite right, always be in good time for a journey," he says ap-
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME, 117
provingly. '* I have got a compartment for you, so you have only to get in, and Til look after the luggage/'
" AVhy, Mr. Cohen, you did not surely get a whole compartment for us ? " — for we are not used to such luxuries.
"Merely a little corruption," he remarks, with extreme satisfaction ; and, stopping before a carriage door, he unlocks it with his key and helps us in. '^Always corrupt the guard, or the station-master, or some one or other. Do it on principle, you know."
" Oh, but it is wrong, surely " .
" Never mind that. Never over-cultivate your conscience ; it's a great mistake, spoils one's enjoyment, and makes everything cut and dried." The sardine always talks as if he had no serious feelings, as if the whole of him was on the surface. He told me once that one of his '^ ideas" in regard to life was to get as much enjoyment as possible out of everything, and to forget everything in two minutes. He is delighted at having surprised
118 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
US by his cleverness. " Wouldn't it have been a bore, now," he asks, " if you had had two fat women, or half a dozen children, all anxious to quarrel with Molly, in the carriage with you ? "
'^Indeed it would," I answer, amused at the idea of Molly quarrelling with any one. " How do you think Molly looks ? '' I ask him, for he has hardly spoken to her yet, and she looks sweeter than ever this morning in her little travelling-hood, and with the flush that excitement has brought to her face.
'*0h, shes all right," he says, putting his long fingers under her little soft chin. "She looks ever so much better than you do," he remarks. "You'll have to look out, or you will chump up, and then what would the programme be, I should like to know ? "
" It would be very awkward," I answer cheerfully. " I think you would have to adopt MoUy."
" That would be a joke," he says thought- fully.
MES. KEITH'S CHIME. 119
" You would have to get a step-mother for her," I saj, trying to amuse him. "The ' little party/ you know."
He shakes his head gravely. " Oh no ; that will never come to anything," he says. " You must get well. You will now ; going away will soon set you up, and Molly too. AVell, here we are — time to start. Write and tell me how they treat you, and how the young 'un prospers. Good-bye." He shakes my hand, and kisses Molly, and in another minute I am straining my eyes to see the last of him as we whirl away.
When he is out of sight I turn to Molly who is sitting opposite, looking pretty and bright and almost well. As I look at her a wild hope seizes me, and, forgetting everything else, I kneel down and put my arms round her, and kiss her, and hold her close, and hide my face in her lap, while all my strength goes forth in a wild hope and prayer that she may live and be strong.
120 MUS. KEITH' 8 CRIME.
CHAPTER IX.
We have been three days here at Marseille. There was some mistake about the boats ; they only call once a fortnight now, so it will be nearly a week before we start for Malaga. I am glad of it. These days are very quiet and peaceful, a blessed lull in the storm ; the beginning, perhaps, of a great calm to come. Molly looks so well that it raakes my heart beat quick with hope to look at her. The travelling did not tire her. The journey from Calais to Paris she slept through, and then the strange sights and trees of Paris — for we stayed a night there — delighted her, and made her open her blue eyes wide with wonder, and break out into little ripples of laughter, almost as if she were suddenly quite well again.
MBS. KBITS* 8 CRIME. 121
" It is SO nice, mummy ! '' she cried, with a long-drawn sigh of content. We strolled on through the streets, watching the light-hearted French people. In the Kue de Eivoli there was a man selling dolls that, when wound up, danced on a little metal table. We stood watching them for a few minutes.
" Would you like one ? " I asked Molly.
" Yes, mother," she answered, in a whisper ; and so for a franc and a half we bought one, and all the way from Paris to Marseille it was with her. But she tired of that long journey, and once or twice began to cry for Jack.
" Oh, mummy dear, where is Jack ? Do tell me where Jack reaUy is. Won't he ever come back ? "
And I could only answer, '^ He was very ill, my darling, and now he is fast asleep. You would not like dear Jack to suffer pain ? "
" But I do want him so," she sobbed ; '^ and perhaps he would get well again."
" Won't mother do for you, my sweet ? She loves you, and will play with you, and read
122 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
stories to you, and do everything in the world for you. Won't poor mother do ? " I asked.
" Oh, but you are not little, mother dear, and Jack is, you know ; and then Jack sings so beautifully. I do want Jack."
But while she was still sobbing we were getting nearer and nearer to Marseille, and, putting my head out of the window, I caught sight of the gilt statue of Notre Dame de la Garde, which towers above the city. I held Molly up to see it, and she gave a cry of sur- prise and was satisfied, and did not even see the tears I brushed away, or, if she did, looked on them as belonging to the past — the past of just a few minutes since, as her own had done, and to be forgotten as they were.
It seems so strange to be here alone with Molly. "We are never apart for five minutes. The thought of work comes now and then, but since Jack died my hands have lost their sense of power, and feel as if they could only wait on Molly. It satisfies and soothes me, this life lived in her service, and it forces me to be
MRS. KEITH'S CRIME, 125
cheerful, knowing that a hundred times a day her eyes seek my face that she may set her little heart by its expression.
We have spent the days almost entirely out in the sunshine, beneath the southern sky, in sight of the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Many parts of Marseille are dreary enough^ but surely the Cannebiere is one of the brightest, grandest streets in Europe ? Molly is delighted to walk by my side slowly along the wide pavement, beneath the great awnings, outside the caf^s. They are wonderful cafes ; we are afraid to enter them, but we can see the palms and the looking-glasses and the pictures, as we go slowly past. Outside, on the pavement, are the little round tables, and the happy French folk drinking their coffee, and talking or reading the little newspapers with all their usual eagerness and all the blessed forgetfulness of care that is so characteristic of their nation. We wander on towards the quay,, and look at the great ships and tall masts, and I, wondering whence they have come and
124 MBS. KEITH'S CBIME.
whither they are going, tell Molly of strange lands far away ; and she, understanding better since she left her home that the world stretches far beyond it, listens as if she were listening to some new fairy tale. We stop as we come back, and turn down the Rue de Grignan, and, coming to the post-office, ask if there are any letters. To my surprise, there is one from the sardine. He has found out about the altera- tion in the boats, and says how sorry he is at the delay ; but I am not. We shall not be happier at Malaga than we are here. We walk on till we come to the Cannebi^re again, and linger by the shops that have placed their wares on wide stalls outside their windows, and Molly talks of spending her little store of money ; but when we get nearer to them the things that have looked so bright in the distance are all commonplace and useless, and most of them are English, and even Molly is not tempted. She likes the flower-market better than anything else in Marseille. We go there every morning. The first time she saw
MRS. KEITH'S CRIME. 125
the women in the raised wooden stalls so like pulpits, with the great bouquets on the counter^ and the baskets brimming over with flowers at their feet, she laughed aloud for joy.
Yesterday we saw an Arab sitting on the ground, selling black beads made of rose-leaves, and baskets of coloured cloth, and charms of shells, and all manner of little odds and ends. We had neither of us ever seen an Arab before,
»
and we stood together looking at him like a couple of foolish children. To Molly he was merely a strange being, with a brown face and a red fez and funny clothes ; but to me he was a whole past suddenly risen up before me, and swiftly I thought of the people he had descended from, of their teaching and their learning, of the universities they had founded and the palaces they had built, of all their glories and triumphs, and of the beggars and the ruins that remained. All in a moment they seemed mixed up before my eyes in the odd, incoherent manner that all things pass before me now, for nothing is clear or consecutive. The Arab
126 MBS. KEITH'S CBIME.
tried to tempt us with his wares, and I bought one of the rose-leaf necklaces for Molly. They say there is a charm in them, but it looked so black about her neck that it made me shudder. We spend hours on the Prado, looking up at the trees and the little bits of blue sky we can see between the green leaves, or listening to the trickling of the fountains, and watching the busy groups and the carriages and the tram- cars going past in the Cannebiere beyond. We sat on one of the seats for a long time yester- day, after our bargaining with the Arab, and amused ourselves by watching the dancing sunshine that came through the leaves. And Molly looked so well and happy that even with the past fresh and sore upon me, I felt that if only the world might stand still at that one moment I could for ever be content. Did not Keats envy the shepherd and the shepherdess on the urn, and the happy chase through all the ages ? If only the world would stand still as it had for those two lovers, how good it would be. But that would not be life, for
MES. KEITH'S CHIME. 127
crystallization is death ; and yet for death so sweet would not life be a trifling price to pay ? Sometimes it is not warm enough to sit long on the Prado, and then we walk slowly up and down ; and if Molly looks tired or cold, I take her up in my arms and carry her. Her weight makes me stagger now and then, but it is only because I am so broken down, for she is very light, and it is a blessed thing to carry her in my arms again, as I used in the little garden at home when she was still a baby ; it makes me fancy that she is a baby still. And it makes me think of Jack, the first little one of all, whose coming made our hearts sing for joy in the happy days gone by.
This is a wonderful city. Every day it grows more impressive ; for, as it knows one better, it seems to take one into its confidence, and to tell one how full it is of memories. I am never tired of watching the water, and thinking of the ships that sailed upon it hundreds of years ago, or of wondering what it all looked like when the Greeks came and
128 MES. KEITH' 8 CRIME.
built their city. It seems to be like a dream now, just as these days are like a dream. Oh that the waking might never come.
How odd are some things of which we can give no rational account. Last night, while Molly was in bed, I sat by her, as I always do — half through the night sometimes, for it seems a pity to waste too much of this most precious time in sleep. And as I watched her, in her little white gown, with her head upon the pillow, she looked like some pure spirit come into the world to bless it. '* She will not surely go ? " I thought ; and then something — ah, what was it ? — seemed to say to me half pityingly, " Can you not submit ? There may be a worse fate still than seeing your little one die ; a day may come, perhaps, when you will wonder that you cried out at Death, that only lingered near in mercy, and to save you." To save me ? " There are some things worse than death," Mrs. Marshall said. Oh, but it is all nonsense and madness and folly. What can anything matter more if
MItS. KEITH'S CRIMK 129
Molly does but live ? If Molly lives and gets strong, then Fate is powerless, and all the world may try its worst, for all other blows have fallen. Pain and poverty or anything in the world may come if this one little life remains. Sometimes at night, when I hear her short, quick breathing, I stand still and tremble and clasp my hands in fear ; but then she turns in her sleep, and is easier, and a new spell of hope comes again ; and so the days go by.
We went an excursion to-day, in one of the tramcars with the seats that reverse. It seemed a pity to spend money on a carriage, and the people in the tramcars looked so happy that we longed to be among them. It is terrible how one hungers for happiness when one is still young ; it is only the old that can be content with sorrow, and make it their accepted lot. We looked at each other with satisfaction as we took our seats. We both felt the same, I think — like two children over- done by fate, and longing to be happy. We
VOL. I. 9
130 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
went far out to a suburb, but its name I have already forgotten. When the car stopped and went no farther, we got down and walked about, and found some trees that looked like sturdy green carubas, the evergreen of John the Baptist, and, in the half-dazed fashion I have got into, they set me dreaming again. And then we came to a long white sunny road, with seats here and there, and a high stone wall on one side, and the blue sea on the other. Over the wall some bright flowers hung in masses. I picked a bunch and made a wreath and put it round Molly's straw hat, and she looked so lovely that it made me laugh right out. Laugh out ! though it is not six weeks since I laid my boy to rest, and the sun that shines on us is shining on the grass above him. My heart quaked at the sound of my own merriment ; and yet — and yet, Molly dear, get well, and I will laugh for you, my sweet.
As we got up from the seat, Molly gave a cry of wonder and surprise, for a long green
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 131
lizard darted past, and she had never seen
one before. We stood still, hand-in-hand, and
watched it for a moment as it disappeared
among the stones. Then we crossed the road
and went over to the sea, and walked a little
way, but she looked so tired that I carried her,
and so we went on till we came to a cafe. It
Avas a little countrified place, with a table
outside and two chairs slanting into the sandy
ground, and a red curtain hung across the
doorway to keep the inside cool. We entered
and rested. It was half a restaurant too, for
they had bread and wine, and very hard cheese
and fruit. I had some coffee, and Molly
ate some small black grapes, while the old
Frenchwoman looked at her, and told me she
was beautiful ; and when I smiled and seemed
pleased she added that she did not look like
a strong child, as if she thought it well to
show that she had discriminating eyes, and
wished to qualify the pleasure she had given.
But she was a kind old woman, and when we
left she came out of the door and stood
132 MB8. KEITH'S CRIME.
watching us on our way, as though she thought it a good thing to keep so sweet a little child in sight as long as possible. The tramcar seemed as if it would never come, so when a chance fly overtook us we stopped it, for Molly was very tired ; but she brightened up as we got in. It was an open fly, and the cushions were . covered with red and white striped hoUand.
*'Such a pretty carriage," she said, and sat up proudly on the seat beside me. The soft wind blew back her hair, and I felt proud to think that she was my own little daughter, and wondered what she would look like some day when she had grown to be a woman. She crept a little closer to me, and whispered, " Mother dear, what are you think- ing about?" and for answer I put my arms around her and drew her closer, and so we drove to the city of Marseille, and to the hotel.
This morning the ship has come, and we are to sail at four o'clock. AVe take our last walk
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 138
down the Cannebi^re, a last walk among the flowers. We pass the Arab with the beads; there are two or three of his countrjrmen about to-day. We walk once more along the Prado, looking up at the trees, and sit down on the seat for a few minutes, so that the sun- shine coming through the leaves above may fleck us with its gold once more. A few hours later we are driving to the quay, and say good-bye to Marseille, while the statue of Notre Daine de la Garde seems to be watching us on our way to Malaga.
134 MBS. KEITH'S CHIME.
CHAPTER X.
Before we have been long on board we make acquaintance with one of the passengers. She sits down, and in the course of an hour, in a dull, mechanical sort of way, tells us all about herself. She is a young woman, pale and quiet. She has the air of a nursery governess, and something in her manner suggests that she is an orphan. She is companion to a Mrs. Greenside, who is not very well and in her cabin.
" Mrs. Greenside is always getting ill,'' Miss Martin says softly; "that is why she goes about so much."
" And does it do her good ? " I ask.
" No ; I don't think so. She never says that she is better," Miss Martin answers.
MBS. KEITH'S CBIME, 135
" Perhaps she likes travelling," I say, just for the sake of saying something, and not because I feel particularly interested in Miss Martin or in Mrs. Greenside.
" Yes, perhaps she does," Miss Martin says, and the utter want of interest in her manner and the dull tones of her voice make one sorry for her.
''And you — do you like travelling?" I ask her.
" Oh yes, sometimes ; only I always get tired of the places, and it is tiresome to be always packing."
She is not a companion of the lady descrip- tion, but of the respectable young person type. She does not say "ma'am," but for all that she bru3hes Mrs. Greenside's hair, and does the packing, and probably gets scolded if anything is left behind.
''Are you not looking forward to seeing your home ? " I ask ; for she looks at me in the pauses, as if meekly waiting to be ques- tioned. She told me a few minutes since that
130 MRS. KEITE'S CBIME.
she and Mrs. Greenside had been abroad for some months.
'^ No," she answers ; " I don't think about it much."
"I thought, perhaps, you had friends or relations, and were longing to see them. People get so anxious about relations when they are far away."
*' Oh yes ; I have relations, of course," she says. " I suppose I shall be glad to see them when the time comes ; but it is no good looking forward or thinking of meeting them before- hand. They may be ill, or a dozen things. Are you going all the way to Bordeaux by this ship ? "
The question is evidently only put to make conversation of some sort. She is no more curious concerning us than interested in herself.
"No; only to Malaga, to winter there. My child is ill," I add, looking towards Molly, who is anxiously watching the man at the wheel.
*^I see," she answers placidly, as if she
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 137
thinks a child's illness as good a reason as any- other for coming abroad. " That gentleman is going to Malaga," she says, indicating a tall man a little way off; "I saw it on his luggage. His name is George Murray."
''Murray? Why, that is the name of the doctor to whom I have an introduction ; but it can't be the same, for his name is John Taylor Murray." I look at him curiously as he slowly passes us. *' He has a good face," I remark.
" Has he ? " she answers. '* I have not looked at him ; people are so much alike abroad. I never look at them now ; but I always notice the names on their luggage. I knew yours was Mrs. Keith before you came on board. I saw your trunks coming up the gangway."
Molly runs up to us, her eyes bright with pleasure, her cheeks tinged with a colour that looks like health.
" I do so like being in a ship 1 " she exclaims. " It is so funny to think that, even if it stops.
138 MBS. KEITH'S CBIME.
there is nothing but water to get out on. It would not do to get off the ship, would it, mother ? "
" No, my child ; it wouldn't," I laugh, and look up at Miss Martin ; but she seems a little bored, and looks over the side of the ship at the waves for a moment or two, and then absently moves away.
When the dinner-bell rings, I find that my place at table is next to Mr. Murray, so conclude that, like myself, he is a recent comer. We soon begin to talk, for on board ship it is an easy matter to get on friendly terms in even a few minutes ; but there is no time to ask him whether he is related to the doctor at Malaga, for I have to hurry away from the table, because it is the hour at which Molly goes to bed. When she is sleeping, I creep uj)- stairs in the twilight, and stand watching the water and the long track the ship leaves on the waves behind us. It is a little cold, and I pull my shawl tighter round me and sit down and think. But I cannot bear it long ; the sea
MRS. KEITH'S CRIME. 139
is too full of memories and all the shadows of meaning, and the darkness and the silence frighten me. Oh, the silence ! how terrible it is. There is no eloquence in this living world so terrible as silence ; but it is the eloquence of the dead. I cannot bear it longer, and turn and go to the cabin where Molly is, and sleep on the sofa beneath the window, opposite her berth, so that when day breaks I may open my eyes to look upon her face. And so the night passes.
Molly awakes early, and cries, '^ mother I "^ It is like the voice of a bird calling from a branch. I open my tired eyes, and blow kisses to her, and call her my pretty one and my dickie-bird ; and she laughs and talks, and looks like a fresh-blown rose, as if in the night all sickness and weakness had fled away.
" We wilt go on deck and see the waves," I say, and begin to dress her.
Sometimes I feel sorry for men. More great- ness is theirs in life, but more sweetness is ours — the sweetness that is gained from little
140 MUS. KEITH'S CRIME.
things, especially, from the daily service given to those we love. I think this as I put on Molly's clothes, while even my finger-tips are sensible of the happiness there is in touching each thing that is hers.
It is a bright, happy morning, and every Avave and ripple rejoices in it. Molly looks round, and gives a little shout for joy as we go on deck, and holds my hand a little tighter just because she feels how lovely it all is, and has no other way of expressing herself Per- haps they expressed themselves so in the beginning of the world, when beauty and happiness were born, but words were not. They did well enough without them, and again I think how eloquent is silence. There is a blissful silence for the living as well as a terrible one for the dead. But I will forget everything concerning death and sorrow on this sweet morning. The sea does not appal me as it did last night, and the memories it brings are less vivid than they have ever been before. For Molly is looking well, and she and
MJRS. KEITH'S CRIME. 141
I are together here in the sunshine, and there is the aching and longing for happiness in my heart, and a half-promise seems in the air — a promise that perhaps, softly and unexpectedly, happiness may come stealing back.
" And now," Molly says, when we are tired of walking about, and have sat down in some still sleeping passenger's chair, for it wants nearly an hour to breakfast, and no one is on deck but ourselves—" and now tell me a story,"
I protest that I don't know one, but she declares I do, and at last I give way, and ask what it shall be, for I seldom tell her new stories, but the old ones over and over again. She seems to think that it is slighting her old friends to like the new ones too well.
*^ Tell me the story of the white rabbit," she says.
So I begin the story of the white rabbit. " * Once upon a time there ivas a white rabbit, and he lived doivn a hole in the woods at the foot of the snow mountai^is,^'' and I go patiently
142 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
on, until at last, with a sad shake of his little white tail, he disappears in the snow palace, and is seen no more.
" It is such a pretty story," she says, with a long sigh of satisfaction; and then we laugh, for we both — she as well as I — know how ridiculous it is.
Suddenly we look up and see Mr. Murray. He is watching Molly, as only a man really fond of children watches a child. We soon get into conversation, while MoUy goes to inspect the wheel-house again, and I discover that he is brother to the Malaga doctor.
" I am to take his patients while he goes to England for the winter,'* he says, "for I am also a doctor."
"Then you will look after Molly?" I answer, feeling a sudden interest in him.
"Yes, certainly I will, if you wish it. There is another English doctor at Malaga now, so that my brother is no longer the only one." There is something honest in this communication. He looks at Molly,
MBS. KEITH'S CBIME. 143
and adds, "The climate will do everything for her."
"Dr. Finch was not very hopeful/' I say sadly ; and tell him what the great doctor has said about her.
"I have seen some strange recoveries," he answers, "A child has the most wonderful faculty for outgrowing things, and there is simply no knowing what climate will not do. We have never till lately taken it sufl&ciently into account. You must make up your mind that she is going to live. A child will outgrow anything, remember." And so, when the break- fast-bell rings, it finds me with a happier face and a lighter heart than I have worn this long time.
Before the day is out I know all about our doctor. He has been in Ceylon, looking after a coffee estate that had belonged to his mother, and at the same time investigatinor the disease in the coffee plant ; but he has done some practising as well. He took an excellent degree at Cambridge, and was at one of the
144 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
London hospitals before going abroad. Now he is on his way to take his brother's practice for the winter, and later on he means to devote himself to the scientific study of medicine. He is very clever, I hear, a little eccentric, very kind-hearted, and fond of children. To look at, he is fair, with soft, kind grey eyes. He is well but slightly built, and perhaps two or three and thirty years of age. There is something about him that it is impossible to help liking, a manliness and frankness, a certain simple confidence in other people and in the best side of all things that wins one, and makes one feel that he is, above all things, a man to trust and believe in.
How quickly these days have passed. In half an hour we shall be at Malaga, or rather we shall have landed, for we have already dropped anchor, and as soon as the usual formalities are over we shall be allowed to go on shore. All the passengers are on deck, and we who are soon to leave the ship, stand
MRS. KEITH'S CHIME. 145
looking anxiously at the Spanish land. Malaga itself looks ugly enough, though its setting is splendid. The houses are white, and the windows many — square black windows, like blank, staring eyes with no white lids to soften them, staring for ever out at the sea. There are tall smoky chinmeys, and the port is dirty and ugly ; but for all this there is compensation in the sun, which is shining over everjrthing. Beyond the city the Sierra de Antequera rises far up into the sky ; and on the other side is a great mountain gorge. Along the shore we can see the sugar-canes, and stretching far back are palms and what we take to be prickly pears and all the strange vegetation that belongs to the southern land. The water beneath us is still and blue, the air is warm and soft ; we hear the dip of the boat- men's oars as they crowd round the ship, and the not very eager voices of the boatmen, oflFering to take passengers on shore. The still- ness around is intense stillness, and every sound that breaks it, whether it be a sailor's voice or
VOL. I. 10
146 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
the dip of an oar, is clear and distinct. Now and then we see movements on shore, but there are few people about ; the whole place seems to be drowsy and sleepy from overmuch sunshine.
Suddenly Miss Martin comes up to me. Mrs. Greenside is not very well. She is afraid to go on, and thinks of landing here. Would I mind coming and speaking to her for a moment ? So I leave Molly sitting on a pile of wraps on the top of one of the boxes, and go to the deck- chair a little way back.
Mrs. Greenside is eight-and-forty perhaps, and overmuch wrinkled for her age. She has very white hands with many rings on them ; among them is a lozenge-shaped diamond one. I see it flashing as I go up to her, and wonder if she bought it, or if in bygone years some one loved her very much and gave her all her rings — ^some one who now is gone. She is not an interesting woman, and one does not care much about her ; but, poor thing, this does not make her pains less keen, or her anxieties less real.
MRS. KEITH'S CRIME. 147
and I go towards her feeling this, and wishing she did not bore me. There is something about her that is rather overpowering; she takes possession of you, she appeals too obviously to your sympathies, so that, though she is ill and alone, you half grudge them. She gives you the impression that she is capable of shams of many nervous kinds, and yet that she is one of those women who, when they are roused, will take any trouble, push themselves anywhere, do anything, give anything, to attain an object not merely for themselves, but for any one who will come before them at the right moment. I am very uncharitable to her.
" Mrs. Keith," she says, and her voice is that of one who has really suffered, and makes me sorry for her in a moment, "I want to ask your advice. You are so clever, and you must have so much courage to travel all alone with your delicate little child, I am sure you will advise me." She always asks advice about things in the most earnest manner, but she never takes it. She always seema to have
148 MRS. KEITH'S CRIME.
made up her mind from the beginning what she is going to do, but you only find this out after she has listened to all you have to say. " Don't you think I had better stay at Malaga ? these short stoppages and voyages upset me ^ terribly. The voyage from Marseille has tired me so."
" And you don't feel well ? " I ask, wondering why she consults me.
^' No, indeed," and she sighs. " I am never well, am I, Miss M^^rtin ? "
She looks up at her companion. Miss Martin is listlessly watching the boatmen rowing round the ship ; but she turns and answers like a machine, " No ; Mrs. Greenside is never well," and watches the boatmen again.
" Do you like the doctor ? " she asks anxiously. " I understand he is going to take his brother's practice at Malaga."
" Yes, certainly I like him ; but I have only known him since we came on board."
^' Oh, but you have evidently so much dis-^ cemment of character."
MRS. KEITH'S CBIME. 149
This is the sort of thing she always says ; she seems to believe in the wisdom of every one about her ; but it is absurd to believe in mine, for she must know much better than I do ^bout most things. Perhaps it comforts her, poor soul, to lean even on the weakest props, for it must be miserable to be alone seeking health, and to have none she loves beside her.
" How far were you going by this ship ? " I ask.
'^ To Gibraltar. I expect to meet my brother there, and his dear motherless girl. She is just like my own child. I never had any <ihildren of my own," she adds, shaking her head sadly ; and my heart aches for her. *'I never had any children," she repeats; ^^ perhaps it is as well, with my wretched health; and this dear girl is just like my own."
"But if you stop here, will you not miss seeing your brother and niece ? " I ask. " Are they at Gibraltar now ? "
" I am not sure whether they have arrived
150 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
yet," slie answers. "They have been yacht- ing in the Mediterranean, and expected to put into Gibraltar about the middle of the month, and I promised to wait for them there. My poor brother is still grieving over his wife's death, and there is no one but me now to take care of his motherless girL"
"But will you not miss them by going to Malaga ? " I ask.
" Oh, if I telegraph, telling them the state I am in, they will instantly come to me," she answers, with a little smile, which seems to say that their devotion to her is unbounded. " I can't go back to England this winter ; it would kill me to face the cold and fog. You know that, don't you. Miss Martin ? "
"Yes, I know that, Mrs. Greenside," Miss- Martin says, turning from the boats again for a minute.
" I should only stay a few weeks at most at Malaga, but it would be a break in my long exile " — she says the word exUe as if it meant Siberia — " and the doctor seems to be a clever
Mils. KEITU'S CEIME. 151
man, he might do me a world of good ; it is so very difficult to come across a good doctor abroad/'
" I dare say you will find it very pleasant at Malaga, Mrs. Greenside," I say, " and I hope it wiU do you good. Perhaps Miss Martin will like seeing Spain too ? " I add, looking up at her. ,
'* Oh ! " Mrs. Greenside exclaims softly, with a little expression round her mouth that says it really does not matter in the least what Miss Martin likes.
'^ It is always interesting to see places," the companion answers, *'only they are so much alike."
" I think we will arrange to land," Mrs. Greenside says nervously. " Thank you so much for your help, Mrs. Keith. Do tell me where you are going to stop ; it would be such a comfort to goto the same place."
I tell her the name of the hotel picked haphazard out of Bradshaw, and then she appears to be satisfied, and proceeds to make arrangenaents for going on shore.
152 MRS. KEITH'S CBIME.
Presently, when I am in the saloon getting Molly a glass of water, I run against Miss Martin, with her arms full of wraps and a dressing-bag and half a dozen other things.
" Let me help you carry these up," I say ; and suddenly something makes me ask, " Miss Martin, is Mrs. Greenside a Jewess ? ''
" I don't know ; she was once. She is not strong enough to trouble about it now ; perhaps she is something else. I never thought about it," the companion answers in her usual voice with her usual expression of face, or I might think that she was joking.
Now I understand what had puzzled me about Mrs. Greenside. I have been wondering if I had met her before. Her face, the pale faded face, that is not thin, yet full of lines and traces of sickness ; the large dull eyes ; the dark hair pushed back ; the diamond rings ; — all had seemed familiar to me, but it wa^ not the individual, but the type that I had recog- nized.
Mrs. Greenside is quite overcome when she
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 153
sees that I have helped to bring up her belongings.
" Oh, Mrs. Keith 1 " she exclaims, " you are too kind. You should have let Miss Martin do this ; she is quite used to it. What a sweet child your little girl is; I have been watching her most intently. She is the image of you, Mrs. Keith." She looks at me and gives a long sigh, and adds, slowly, "she is most beautiful." And then she opens a bag and gives Molly some chocolate, and watches her ^at with a solemn interest that is almost touching. She is evidently a very kind woman ; I am glad we are going to the same hotel.
154: MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
CHAPTER XL
It is very exciting to look at Malaga. I stand and drink it in with my eyes. What does it matter if the houses are ugly and gaunt ? There behind are the great mountains^ and the bright green vegetation glowing in the light, and above is the blue sky, and all about is the sunshine — the blessed sunshine that is to make my little child well. I turn and look at her, and as our eyes meet we laugh like two children glad to be together, and full of thankfulness that we are here.
A quarter of an hour later, while Miss Martin is still getting Mrs. Greenside's many packages together, Molly and I go down the gangway steps and row to the Spanish shore. I wonder if I shall ever forget the noise and fuss and
MES. KEITH'S CRIME. 155
discomfort of this landing? And yet I do not mind any of it ; it amuses me, and the strangeness and newness of everything fasci- nate me just as they do Molly, who clings to me, and looks up at me with grave eyes wide open and bewildered, not knowing whether to laugh or to be afraid. There is no custom-house. Our luggage is examined there in the street, while we look on, and the dirty black-eyed beggar boys lean over the rail put to prevent them from crowding round too closely. At last we manage to get into a jolting fly, and the porters and boatmen lift up our luggage, and with much earnestness cheat us right and left before they let us drive oflF to the hotel.
Mr. Murray was to have been with us, and promised to help us land, but a fireman on board the ship injured his hand, and he stayed behind to see what could be done. But we are all safe now, I think, as we drive away, and look curiously around to see what this new land to which we have come is like. It is not as yet inviting. The streets are dirty, the
156 MRS. KEITH'S CRIME.
houses low ; we pass no handsome buildings, no gay cafes as at Marseille ; there are no trees till we get to the Alameda, and there they look dusty and miserable, and the ground beneath them is dirty and ill-kept. Alto- gether, it looks as cheerless a place for winter- ing in as can well be imagined. There is a cold, north-easterly wind blowing, too ; at sea we did not feel it, but here it meets us as we turn the comers of the narrow, unsavoury streets. My heart misgives me, but still I will not be dismayed. Is there not a blue sky overhead, and surely that will see my little Molly get well, and what else matters ? Sud- denly the excitement fails, a mist gathers about all things, and I remember that I have been suffering pain these hours past, though I have hardly noticed it.
" Mother dear,'' Molly whispers, as we stop at the hotel, "your face is so white. Are you ill, darling?" and she pushes her hand into mine.
I look round and see some dirty boys
MRS. KEITH'S CBIME. 157
•watching us. There is a beggar who holds up a diseased arm ; there is a man leaning against the doorpost. I can see a little way into the hall of the hotel — it is ugly and dirty; and then all things swim softly away, and I can see the blue water and the ship, and it is all so beautiful, only I am choking ; and where is Molly ? Is Molly gone ?
We are sitting in a little room, evidently just inside the hotel. It looks like the porter's room. There is a half-bottle of wine on the table, and a half-finished plateful of untempt- ing-looking food. Outside the door is our luggage. Some ragged children peep in from the street ; I can see the people passing to and fro, Molly has been crpng, and clings to me in fear ; she kisses me as I look wonderingly around, and try to remember what it all means. There is a dark man standing by me, with a look of patient waiting on his face, as if he had been politely wasting his time till it should please me to come to my senses again.
158 MJRS. KEITH'S CBIME.
" Is anything the matter ? " I ask.
The dark man bows and goes leisurely to the door, and, looking up and down the hall, makes a strange sound which my little know- ledge of Spanish will not permit me to under- stand, It results in the coming of a fair man with a red moustache, and a heavy watch- chain so evidently false that it catches my eye the moment he appears. He is English, and the interpreter to the hotel,
" Is anything the matter ? " I repeat.
" You were faint, madam," he answers, with a bow and smile, as though he were making some pleasant little remark. " The fatigue of the journey, perhaps. You are better, and would like to see your rooms, madam ? We have sent for the English doctor, but he is not yet here. You would like to see him in your room ? "
Molly clings to me and caresses my hand as we go up the bare, unswept stairs. Was ever place so unwelcoming in the civilized world as this Spanish one ? Slowly foUowing
MRS. KEITH'S CBIME. 159
•
the Englishman and the Spaniard, who seems to be the landlord, we pass the salle-h-manger on the first floor ; it looks dark and haunted by flies. On the whitewashed walls we can see what appears to be the advertisement of a bull-fight. We go up another flight of stairs, and stop before a door. We wait till the landlord succeeds in unlocking it, and opens one half of it, and then we enter, Molly and I, and look round. It is a large room, with a dusty red tile floor. It contains two beds in an alcove, and a table is in the middle of the room ; against the wall there is a large worm-eaten sofa covered with faded green velvet. Everything is worn out and tawdry and uncomfortable. We go to the windows and look out. There is the Alameda stretching along the middle of the wide space between us and the opposite houses. On either side the Alameda are the broken-down carriages, the beggars, and the people who are not beggars and yet do not look one whit more cheerful than their less prosperous fellows. I think of
160 MB8. KEITH'S CBIME.
the French people, and the Italians and the Swiss, and wonder why these Spaniards look so different. There is a row of houses on the other side of the Alameda, but it is not picturesque; nothing is. As yet everything is ugly and disappointing, and I begin to think with dismay that this is not the place in which Molly will get well.
The landlord disappears, and I sit down on the faded sofa, and, taking Molly on my lap, try hard to keep back the tears that weakness and disappointment are forcing into my eyes. But this is foolish. We came for the sky, not for the houses or the furniture. Why should I lose heart because the streets are dusty and the rooms are ugly ?
^^Dear little Molly," I say, "we will be very happy here;" but do not quite believe myself.
In half an hour Dr. Murray comes, and as I look at him I feel thankful that we are not to be in his hands for the winter. He is older by ten years than the brother who has just
MRS. KEITH'S CRIME. 161
arrived. He is tall and grave, with cold grey eyes and a well-shaved chin. He has a way of looking at you as though he could see you through and through, and he makes you feel, while you are speaking to him, as if you were not altogether accurate, and that knowing this he coldly made allowance for it. For all this, there is something in his manner that impresses you with his skill ; you dislike him, but you feel an unwilling confidence in his power. He asks what is the matter, and looks at me curiously and silently while I hurriedly tell him that nothing is the matter except that I have been tired, and have fainted from fatigue, I suppose, and anxiety about my child. I was always impatient of doctoring for myself, and never could take the trouble to carry out direc- tions, but when I have been ill have always got well as best I could, and from mere strength of my own will.
Dr. Murray is apparently satisfied with my account, though I feel that he does not alto- gether believe it ; he prescribes a tonic, and
VOL. I. 11
162 MRS. KEITH' 8 CRIME.
then he looks at Molly. He reads the letter I have brought from Dr. Finch, and says he will come with his brother to examine her to- morrow. It will be better that they should do so together, as she is to be his brother's patient. He says, in a cold, confident voice, that a child's life is a thing never to be despaired of — which, while it shows that he recognizes the gravity of Dr. Finch's report, gives me hope and courage. And then he remarks that we have come to the wrong hotel — that this is not the best place, though it is kept by respectable people ; and I tell him how disappointing Malaga is as far as 1 have seen it, that it looks like the dreariest, ugliest place in the world for sick folk to get well in, and that I had hoped we should be in the country.
" Perhaps you would like Zahra better," he says politely. *' It is a little place four or five miles from Malaga, along the shore. There is an inn there, quite Spanish, but com- fortable and clean. A good many Spaniards
MRS. KEITH'S CRIME. 163
stay there in the summer for the bathing, and English people have had a fancy for it last year and this. It is warm and sheltered, and there are some pretty walks, which there are not around Malaga."
" Why do people come to Malaga ? " I ask.
*' Simply for the climate,'' he answers. " There is nothing else."
" But we should be so far from a doctor if we went to this other place."
**No, for my house is at Zahra," he answers, '^ and my brother will live in it this winter. I merely come into Malaga every day, and at night if 1 am wanted they have to send a man on horseback after me."
" And it is pretty ? "
''It is interesting, as all places are where the Moors have been. 1 don't know, of course, if the Moorish traditions interest you ; they do most people. Unfortunately, they have left few traces of any kind at Zahra. An old Welshman, Udal ap Rhys, who described it in
164 MUS, KEITH'S CRIME.
some travels he wrote a great many years ago, said it was a cultivated garden full of flowers and fruit, with a climate that was truly blessed, but this is no longer true of it, except in regard to the climate."
" Why is this ? "
He shrugs his shoulders, and looks as if he did not wish to be led into a discussion. "The last thing a Spaniard does is to take care of the land,'' he answers. '' But, as I say, it has a fine climate, and it is free from the dust and smells of Malaga. I will leave you to think it over, Mrs. Keith ; " and he looks as if he wished to go.
" There are some English at the inn at Zahra ? " I ask, anxious to be satisfied on that point.
"Fonda de Madrid it is called. Several English people are there : Lord and Lady Bexley, and some very nice people called Vin- cent." Vincent ? They are Alice Grey's friends.
" Is a Mr. Ralph Bicknell staying there ? " I ask quickly, suddenly remembering my old
MRS. KEITH'S CRIME. 165
playfellow, and thinking it would be pleasant to see him again.
Dr. Murray looks at me coldly for a moment, as if he disapproved of the question, though I do not know why he should. It makes the colour come to my face, not on Ralph BicknelVs account, but because of Dr. Murray's seeming disapproval.
*' He may be," he answers, '* but I don't know him by name. Several people have been there this winter. But you had better rest here for a few days, Mrs. Keith," he says, in a distant, professional tone. ** To-morrow my brother and 1 will come and see your child."
After he has gone. Miss Martin comes to the door to ask after Molly, and if she may help me to unpack. I refuse the oflfered kindness, but am grateful enough to her; and then Molly, standing by the window, cries out for joy at sight of a water-carrier, and the next moment something else takes her fancy, and she exclaims, ** Oh, mother, the ladies in the street
166 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
have no bonnets on — only lace things, and they are so pretty."
What a world of trifles it is. Passing a looking-glass, I lift Molly up in my arms and stand before it. We both look better, and suddenly I laugh out just as I did at Marseille, for the new hope is strong again, and she looks as if she would get well. And then all the world will grow bright again, and we shall be happy oDce more. It is not coldness, it is not for- getfulness, but I am so sated with sorrow ; I am young and full of life, and my heart hungers and cries out for happiness, and longs for it as a starving soul for food. Get well, little Molly ; get well, my sweet, and we will be happy together.
Molly is going to dine at the table dhdte with the rest on this first evening. As we enter the dining-room the dark -haired Spaniards turn and look at her, and my knowledge of Spanish is enough to let me understand when one of them says that she is beautiful, and that her hair is like the sunshine. The other Spaniard
MB8. KEITH'S CRIME. 167
says it is like her mother's hair, and I am as pleased to be admired once more as if all the world were before me still, and sorrow and I were strangers.
X68 MBS. KEITH'S CSIME.
CHAPTEE XII.
We are all at Zahra, Mrs. Greenside and Miss Martin, Molly and I.
" Let us go at once, my dear Mrs. Keith," Mrs. Greenside said, directly she was told of the place. It was odd how she fastened herself on to us at Malaga, as if she almost felt us to be some help and protection. She is a nervous, clinging woman, and evidently must lean on some one ; it makes me think how terrible her widowhood must be to her. Yet it is strange that she, so many years older and so much richer than I, and not alone here as I am, for Miss Martin is with her, should find it any comfort to lean on a broken reed like myself. Poor thing 1 But I am glad to be of any comfort, even though it is ever so little, to some one in the world.
MRS. KEITH'S CRIME. 169
" Would it not be very dull for you at this little place ? " I asked ; " and what would you do about your brother ? "
"He would come to me at Zahra," she answered, with her little confident smile, while her diamond rings flashed in the sunshine. " He would come to me anywhere."
" And your niece — would it not be dull for her ? The doctor said it was a very quiet place."
" But he said there were some English at the hotel. They are sure to be pleasant people."
It was evident that the people at the hotel had a great deal to do with Mrs. Greenside's longing to go to Zahra. I confess that they had with mine also, chiefly because I was anxious to see my old playfellow again, and he was perhaps with the Vincents, I thought ; even if he was not, it would be interesting to see the girl he was possibly in love with, for I remem- bered what Alice Grey had said about Miss Vincent. I told Mrs. Greenside that some
170 MRS. KEITH'S CHIME.
friends of my cousin's were at Zahra, and that the doctor had mentioned that Lord and Lady Bexley were there also, and then she became still more eager to leave Malaga without delay.
" It will be such a good thing for you to be in the same house with some friends, Mrs. Keith," she said, in her slow, eager voice, though 1 felt that it was not for me, but rather for herself, that she was urging it. "Lord and Lady Bexley will be interesting people to meet. He wrote a most delightful book of travels in Italy; I remember seeing it at the hotel at Genoa last year. Let us go at once, Mrs. Keith," she repeated. ** It will be much better than this place for your sweet little child."
" I must wait until Dr. Murray and his brother have seen her," I said. "But don't let us keep you, Mrs. Greenside ; we will come on to-morrow or the next day," I added, thinking that there was no reason why she should wait for me.
" Oh no ; I am too tired," she answered. " I
MSS. KEITH'S CBIMK 171
ought to rest to-day ; besides, I am so anxious to hear what they say about your little girl."
Presently, almost against my will, and in spite of myself, I found that we were driving round Malaga, "just to see what it was like," she said. Somehow, she impressed me with the idea, as we drove along, that she was merely looking at the place with the eye of a person who would at some future time desire to talk about it if the opportunity offered, but from no other point of view, and with no other desire. That drive confirmed all that we had both previously thought of Malaga. The streets were as ugly as they had looked the day before ; the only drive the man seemed to know was along the dried-up bed of a river. We jolted on in the sand, and over the stones at the foot of barren ranges, past prickly pears and straggling, neglected sugar-canes, in sight of grand outlines of forlorn-looking brown mountains, until our hearts grew heavy and our spirits sank.
" Oh, let us go back," Mrs. Greenside said,
172 MRS. KEITH'S CRIME.
and there was a sudden air of authority about her, in spite of her clinging manner ; "we will go back at once, Mrs. Keith."
Without waiting for an answer, she told the driver to turn back. She insisted on paying for the carriage ; I did not know why, but she did it as a matter of course, and when I offered her my share she pushed me away almost rudely. Taking no notice of the driver's attempts at extortion, she walked into the hotel with a languid air of suffering and determina- tion, mingled with a visible satisfaction at not having been cheated as much as might have been expected, that was both curious and amusing.
" Take my things upstairs. Miss Martin," she said, and went slowly up to her room, while the companion followed.
Molly and I followed too, and as we stopped at our own door Mrs. Greenside turned.
" Now, do go and get some rest, dear Mrs. Keith," she said. *'I am sure you want it after that terrible drive, and let me know what
MRS, KEITH'S CRIME. 173
the doctors say to your child. I shall be so. anxious to hear. To-morrow we will go to Zahra ; I dare say Dr. Murray would secure rooms for us."
When we had meekly entered and shut the door, but not till then, she turned away from us.
While Molly rested on the green sofa, and I was impatiently waiting for the doctor and his brother, I wrote to the sardine, giving him various details of our journey, and to amuse him, described Mrs. Greenside and told him how I had found out that she was a Jewess, but thought she was ashamed of it, for I knew that w^ould make him laugh ; and then I put aside my letter, in order to add a postscript after the doctor and his brother had been.
They came quite punctually. They examined Molly carefully, and consulted together, and then they came back to me, after I had carried Molly into Mrs. Greenside's room, so as to be alone to hear their verdict. " Well ? " I asked anxiously.
174 MRS. KEITH'S CRIME.
" Well," Dr. George, as I call him, to dis- tinguish him from his brother, said, "you must cheer up, Mrs. Keith. The child is very- delicate, but we cannot see why, with care and in time, she should not grow strong."
They seemed such blessed words. I looked round, at the two little beds in the alcove, at the faded sofa, at the tops of the dusty trees that I could see out of the window, and wondered why the whole world had altered so suddenly, for nothing looked ugly or dreary now.
" You think she won't die ? " I gasped. *' You think she may really live ? "
They seemed half to repent their good words.
"We can't be certain, Mrs. Keith," Dr. George said gently. " We only say that she may outgrow her weakness ; " and then he added, " We are anxious about you ; we think you look so delicate. Have you any friends likely to come out to you here ? "
" No, none," I answered ; " but that doesn't matter. I shall get quite well if Molly does. I have only been over- worried."
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 175
Dr. Murray was looking at me critically. *' I think she would be better at Zahra," he said to his brother.
''We are going there if we may and can get rooms/' I tell them.
" I will go and look after them. At Zahra you will be near me, and I can take care of you," Dr. George said, with a helpful look in his kind eyes. " There are plenty of books in my brother's house, and Molly can come and gather oranges in the garden."
Thus it was that we came to Zahra. We all came together — Mrs. Greenside, Miss Martin, Molly, and I. We were quite right to come, we saw that directly; it is a great improve- ment on Malaga. It is a very little place, just as the doctor said, but it is making a little struggle of its own to get into fashion. The Spaniards like it, and come in the summer to bathe — ^not many, but quite enough to suggest a future to any one with ambition or energy, though in this country it is doubtful if such a one is to be found anywhere. There is a
176 MBS. KEITH'S CRIME.
beach, and a shady promenade above it; a wide street, a few narrow ones, two or three smart cafes^ and an inn. The last is in the wide street, opposite the chief cafe; it is not large, but clean and simple, and comfortable in spite of its bareness. There are three jfloors of rooms built after the Moorish plan round a patio, or covered courtyard. There are great palms growing in the patio ; and beneath them, in the shade, are wicker chairs and divans. Our rooms are on the second floor and at the side, overlooking a narrow street. Opposite our windows is a church. The church is open all day long, and the bell, which has a slightly cracked sound that is not unpleasant, seems to ring at no stated times, but just when the fancy takes it.
An hour after our arrival, while I am still unpacking and worn out with fatigue. Miss Martin comes with a message from Mrs. Greenside. " She is quite sure that I am tired, and will I bring Molly to afternoon tea in her rooms ; " we are both glad enough, and
MRS, KEITH'S CRIME. 177
accept gratefully. So we cross over to her rooms on the right-hand side of the house, and find that she has very large and comfortable ones, looking towards the sea. They must cost a good deal more than ours, I think to myself, but many things have made it evident that she is rich. There are all manner of pretty things and luxuries about — a brass kettle is over a spirit-lamp, and a teapot and a dainty after- noon service are put ready ; they have all evidently come out of the red plush-lined case standing near. The silver-gilt fittings of her dressing-case are lying about, and as I look at them I think that it is a good thing to be a Jew or a gipsy. They are the two races that somehow inherit the world. I have heard that the one is but the outconje of the other. I do not know how this may be, but it always seems that to the Jew belongs the inside of the world — the gold and jewels and stufis, th^ gorgeous rooms and piled-up cofiers ; and to the gipsy belongs the outside — the sky and the sunshine, the tent on the grass, the
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178 MR 8. KEITH'S CRIME.
merry road, and all the secrets of happy- nature.
" Come, Mrs. Keith," Mrs. Greenside says, in the rather protecting manner she is graduaUy putting on, for that of the drooping traveller is fast vanishing, "I am sure you must want some tea. Now, you must sit in this chair. Miss Martin, put my two square down pillows behind Mrs. Keith's back." It is no good protesting ; besides, it is very nice to be made much of, and I, little used to it, find the strange sensation too pleasant to resist. "I have seen your friends, Mr. and Mrs. Vincent, Mrs. Keith."
" But they are not my friends," I interrupt ; " they are merely friends of a cousin of mine."
" Oh, but people so soon make up an intimacy abroad," she answers earnestly ; and I find myself noticing that the odd thing about Mrs. Greenside is that she seldom smiles and never laughs. Life seems to her a grave and important business, in which there is no time for frivolity, or for anything that is in a sense
MBS. KEITH'S CRIME. 179
unworldly. " They have a charming daughter ; she has quite a beautiful walk. I am very glad I have come here ; Malaga all but made me ill again, did it not, Miss Martin ? "
'* Yes, Mrs. Greenside ; it did," Miss Martin answers.
'' And now, Mrs. Keith, tell me all about yourself," Mrs. Greenside says, putting down her cup, and looking me full in the face, with the air of a sympathetic person who has a right to know all one's personal history, and will not be denied.
I tell her what there is to tell: that I am alone, and worked, and that Jack died, and why we have come abroad — all as briefly as possible, and then she is satisfied. I could almost fancy that, knowing all there is to know about us, we lose some of our interest for her, as a book that is read, or a piece of yester- day's news. I am very ungrateful, and I hate myself for not liking Mrs. Greenside more, and for not trusting her, for she is very kind to me. Suddenly the man, the useful man who does
180 MBS. KEITH'S CBIME.
all manner of things in the hotel, enters and hands me two letters. Doctor George has sent them to me from Malaga. He had promised to inquire if there were any, for the office opened at such uncertain hours that it seemed useless to try and get them myself ; besides, I hardly expected any. The man who brought them in asks if we would like to see some lace ; a woman from the town beyond Zahra has brought some to sell.
While Mrs. Greenside and Miss Martin bargain, I read my letters. They are from our two good friends ; there is no one else to send us any. Mrs. Marshall writes a kind, cold letter, which is characteristic of her. She is going to Australia with her husband, on a visit to some of his relations, and does not expect to be back until the middle of next year, and she asks me to write to her at Melbourne and tell her how Molly is. The sardine sends a short note, but a kind one ; it is characteristic also. He has had my letter from Marseille, and writes at once, for he knows " how slow those
MBS, KEITH'S CRIME. 181
Spanish beggars are, and letters take best part of a week to get anywhere in that lovely country." He is glad we are getting along all right. He is pretty well, thanks ; rather down in the mouth, but that doesn't matter. By the way, some friends of his are yachting somewhere about the Mediterranean. He doesn't know where they are likely to put in, but on a beggarly little sea like that they may turn up anywhere ; so, if we should come across them, I can let him know. Then there is a postscript. " Josephs is the name ; you needn't say I told you to let me know. liy the way, I am going to Paris next month, so, if you want anything, only tell me, and I will start it from there." So from this I gather that the friends who are yachting are interesting to the sardine, and I remember the remark about the little girl who " did not seem to see it," and wonder if she is on board.
" Surely it is the wrong time of year for yachting in the Mediterranean ? " I say, as I
182 MRS. KEITE'8 CRIME.
watch Miss Martin fold up the lace they have bought and put it carefully away.
Mrs. Greenside is a little flattered, thinkiDg that I am alluding to her brother, and she answers with apologetic pride, " Oh, but they have a very large steam yacht, and my brother is so accustomed to her, he goes about in any weather."
Suddenly an idea strikes me. *^ What is your brother's name ? " I ask.
" Josephs," she answers, rather coldly.
"Is he the member for ? " I ask. It
is strauge how useful little odds and ends of memories are. I remember about three years
since seeing the walls of placarded with
" Vote for Josephs," but never even knew whether he was returned or not, for I am not a politician. My question pleases Mrs. Green- side, and she answers —
" Oh yes. He is exceedingly clever," she adds. " He might have been anjrthing he pleased ; but he never cared to go into Parlia- ment till last year."
L..
MRS. KEITH' 8 CRIME, 183
She speaks as if he had only had to open the door and walk in ; evidently her brother is a very remarkable man. I wonder if she * knows Mr. Cohen ; but perhaps it will be wiser not to ask. I remember the letter I posted from Malaga containing an account of Mrs. Greenside, and in it I mentioned that she expected her brother and niece. Then I do not see why I should conceal my acquaint- ance with the sardine; there is always some- thing unpleasant about seciets.
■* Mrs. Greenside, do you know Mr. Frederic Cohen, in London?" I ask. ^'He Uves in Princes Gardens."
« Oh yes," she says, in a sUghtly supercilious manner, and with the air of a person who knows every one, but only knows him as a matter of course. " He was one of the young men who were in love with Helen last season."
" Your niece ? "
" Yes ; but, of