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MRS. KEITH’S CRIME
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 happy that she had kept him. He
had been to the Zoo, and to-morrow was going to Richmond 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 landlady 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, perhaps 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 wraps afterwards. He waits till he 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 shall 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?’
‘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 she 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 when I get to
the lawyer’s office. He is engaged, but will see me if I wait for half an hour.
So I wait, while my courage ebbs away behind the advertisement sheet of the Times, and the clerks
scratch away at their desks. Perhaps it is the squeaking of their quills that
affects my nerves, or the naked ugliness of the room, or the row of tin boxes
on the shelves opposite, with the owner’s 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 inquiringly.
‘How do you do?’ and I sit down. ‘I
came to see you the other day, but you were away.’ There is no 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 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 killed 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 it,’ he answered 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.’ 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—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 is tied up,’ he
says. ‘It is quite out of our power.’
‘Out of your power?’
‘Quite out of my 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
circumstances, 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 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 money. It is not use selling the
things at home; they certain would not realise 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, but 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 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 little
shrug, and says nothing.
‘And you think no one—no one would
lend us the money?’
‘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 compassionate voice. ‘It is not as if the money were absolutely your own.’
Then I give up hope as far as he is
concerned, 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 is 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, ‘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 I 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 any corner of even the darkest road hope may be
lurking or some surprise awaiting us. But Death! 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 my here. You don’t mind, do
you, mammy dear?’
‘Mind?’ I cry. ‘Oh my sweet darling,
my own little child!’ 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; taking a form from a drawer,
I 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 off; 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 k 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, but I laugh at it, and somehow it vanishes; and Molly calls to me
from the sofa, and I go and put my face down on her soft hair that is the
colour of sunshine—ah, God! of the sunshine that perhaps will be shining down
upon her grave a few months hence. Oh, but I am going mad.