A Son of Hagar: A Romance of Our Time

"Ill? You say he is ill? Then he could not come. And I blamed him for not coming!"

"The gentleman is weak, but noways worse; belike he will go straight off and meet you at the station."

Greta turned away once again, and went upstairs slowly. At a door on the first landing she tapped lightly, and when a voice answered from within she entered the room.

The superior was on her knees at a table. She lifted a calm and spiritual face as Greta approached.

"Reverend mother," said Greta, "I am leaving you this moment."

"So soon, my daughter?"

"My husband has sent for me; he will meet me at the railway station at twelve."

"Why did he not come himself?"

"He is ill; he has gone direct."

"The hour is late and the message is sudden. Are you satisfied?"

"I am anxious, reverend mother – "

"What is it, my daughter?"

"An old gentleman, a clergyman, Mr. Christian, is coming from Cumberland. I have expected him hourly, but he is not yet arrived. I cannot wait; I must rejoin my husband. Will you order that a message be left for the clergyman?"

"What is the message, my child?"

"Simply that I have returned with my husband by the train leaving St. Pancras at midnight."

"The lay sister in the hall shall deliver it."

"Who is the sister?"

"Sister Grace."

There was a silence.

"Reverend mother, has Sister Grace ever spoken of the past?"

The superior told a few beads.

"The past is as nothing to us here, my daughter. Within these walls the world does not enter. In the presence of the Cross the past and the future are one."

Greta drew a long breath. Then she stooped and kissed the hand of the superior, and turned softly away.

Greta and the landlady passed out through the deep portico, and the same nun who had opened the door closed it behind them. Mrs. Drayton clung to Greta's arm as they went through, and her hand trembled perceptibly.

"Who is she?" whispered the landlady, when they were seated in a cab.

"Sister Grace," said Greta, and turned her head aside.

"I could ha' sworn as she were the mother of my Paul," murmured Mrs. Drayton.

Greta faced about, but the landlady saw nothing of the look of inquiry; her eyes, like her thoughts, were far away.

CHAPTER XX

Though the hour was late, the streets were thronged. The people were trooping home from the theaters; and the Strand, as Greta and the landlady crossed it, was choked with cabs and omnibuses. The cab drove through the Seven Dials, and there the public-houses were disgorging at every corner their poor ruins of men and women. Shouts, curses, quarreling, and laughter struck upon the ear above the whir of the wheels. Unshaven men and unwashed women, squalid children running here and there among the oyster and orange stalls, thieves, idlers, vagabonds of all conditions, not a few honest people withal, and among them the dark figures of policemen.

Greta's heart beat high that night. Her spirit was full of a new alacrity. Every inch of the way, as they flew over the busy streets, seemed to awake in her soul some fresh sensibility. She wondered where the multitudes of people came from, and whither they were going – vast oceans on oceans of humanity, flowing and ebbing without tide.

She wanted to alight a hundred times, and empty her pockets of all her money. A blind man, playing a tin whistle, and leading a small dog held by a long string, awoke her special pity; the plaintive look in the eye of the cur was an object of peculiar sympathy. A filthy woman, reeling drunk and bareheaded across the street, almost under the feet of the horses, her discolored breast hanging bare, and a puny infant crying feebly in her arms, was another occasion for solicitude. A tiny mite that might have been a dirty boy, coiled up in a ball on a doorstep like a starved cat, was an object of all but irresistible attraction. But she dare not stop for an instant; and, at last, with this certainty, she lay back and shut her eyes very resolutely, and wondered whether, after all, it were not very selfish to be very happy.

The cab stopped with a jolt; they were at St. Pancras station.

"Has he come?" asked Greta, eagerly, and looked about her with eyes that comprehended everything at a glance.

She could not see Paul, and when a porter opened the cab and helped her to alight, it was on her tongue to ask the man if he had seen her husband. But no, she would not do that. She must look for him herself, so that she might be the first to see him. Oh, yes, she must be the very first to see him, and she was now obstinately determined to ask no one.

The porter brought round the truck, and wheeled the luggage onto the platform, and Greta and Mrs. Drayton followed it. Then the wide eyes that half smiled and looked half afraid beneath their trembling lids glanced anxiously around. No, Paul was not there.

"What is the time?" she asked, her eyes still wandering over the bustling throng about her.

"Ten to twelve, miss," announced the porter.

"Oh," she said, with a sigh of relief, "then he will soon be here."

"Will you sit in the waiting-room, miss?" asked the porter; and almost unconsciously she followed him when he led the way. Mrs. Drayton hobbled behind her.

"What did he say about being ill?" she asked, when they were left together.

"That he was only a bit dizzy. Mayhap he's noways 'customed to illness," said the landlady.

"That is true. And what did you say then?"

"I coaxed him to rest him a bit, and take a drop o' summat, and he smiled and said, 'Thank you, my good woman.'

"You were in the right, you dear old soul," said Greta. And she put her arms about the landlady and hugged her. "I'm sure you've been very good to my husband, and watched him tenderly, while I, who should have nursed him, have been away. Thank you, thank you!"

Mrs. Drayton was feeling uneasy. "Well, d'ye know, I can't bear to see a fellow creatur' suffer. It goes agen me someways."

Greta had risen to her feet. "Stay here, Mrs. Drayton – Drayton, isn't it? – stay here while I go on to the platform. He might come and not see me. Ah, yes, he may be looking everywhere for me now."

She went out and elbowed her way among the people who were hurrying to and fro; she dodged between the trucks that were sliding luggage on to the weighing machine and off to the van. The engines were puffing volumes of smoke and steam up to the great glass roof, where the whistle of the engine-man echoed sharp and shrill. Presently she returned to the waiting-room.

"Oh, Mrs. Drayton," she said, "I dreamed a fearful dream last night. What do you think? Will he be well enough to come?"

"Coorse, coorse, my dear. 'Tell her to meet her husband at twelve.' Them's the gentleman's own words."

"How happy I shall be when we are safe at home! And if he is ill, it will be for me to nurse him then."

The light in the dove-like eyes at that moment told plainly that to the poor soul even illness might bring its compensating happiness.

"And as to dreams, to be sure, they are on'y dreams; and what's dreams, say I?"

"You are right, Mrs. Drayton," said Greta, and once more she shot away toward the platform. Her mind had turned to Parson Christian. Could it be possible that he had arrived? The porter who had brought in her luggage was still standing beside it, and with him there was another porter. Their backs were toward Greta as she came out of the waiting-room, and, tripping lightly behind them, she overheard a part of their conversation before they were aware that she was near.

"See the old file in the gaiters by the eleven up?" said one.

"Rather. A reg'lar grandmother's great-grandfather just out of the year one. Talk about swallows, eh? – and the buckles – and the stockings!"

"Good sort, how-an'-ever."

"Good for a tip, eh? Wouldn't ha' thought it."

"No, but a real good-hearted 'un an' if he is a Pape."

"Never?"

"To be sure. Got me to put him in a fly for the Catholic Convent up Westminster way."

Greta could restrain herself no longer, but burst in upon them with twenty questions. When had the parson arrived? When had he left? Was it in a fly? Would it go quickly? Could there be time for it to get back?

"What's your train, miss – twelve to the north?"

"Yes; will he catch it?"

"Scarce get back at twelve," said the porter. But, in spite of this discouraging prophecy, Greta was so elated at the fresh intelligence that she drew out her purse and gave the man five shillings. She had no other change than two half crowns and two pennies, and in her present elevation of soul there could be no choice, between the silver and the copper, as to which the bearer of such news deserved.

The man stared, and then smiled, but he quickly reconciled himself to the unexpected. With extraordinary alacrity he labeled the luggage, and bowled off to the north train, which was already at the platform.

It was now within three minutes of midnight, and Mrs. Drayton had joined Greta in the bustling throng on the platform.

"Oh, I feel as if a thousand hearts were all swelling and beating in my breast at once," said Greta. "Mrs. Drayton, is it certain that he will come? Porter, have you put the luggage in the van? Which is the train – the left?"

"No, miss, the left's going out to make room for the local train up from Kentish Town and Hendon. The right's your train, miss. Got your ticket, miss?"

"Not yet. Must I get it, think you? Is the time short? Yes, I will get two tickets myself," she added, turning to the landlady. "Then when he comes he will have nothing to do but step into the carriage."

"You'll have to be quick, miss – train's nigh due out – only a minute," said the porter.

Greta's luminous eyes were peering over the heads of the people that were about her. Then they brightened, with a flash more swift than lightning, and all her face wore in an instant a heavenly smile. "Ah, he is there – there at the back – at the booking-office – run to him, run my good, dear creature; run and tell him I am here! I'll find a compartment and have the door open."

Greta tripped along the platform with the foot of a deer. In another moment she had a carriage door open, and she stood there with the handle in her hand. She saw him coming who was more than all the world to her. But she did not look twice. No, she would not look twice. She would wait until they were within, alone, together.

Side by side with him walked Hugh Ritson. Could it be possible? And was it he who had brought her husband? Ah! he had repented, and it was only she who had been bitter to the end. How generous of him! how cruel of her!

Her eyes fell, and a warm flush overspread her cheeks as he who came first stepped into the carriage. She did not look again at him, nor did he look again at her. She knew he did not, though her eyes were down. "Oh, when we are alone!" she thought, and then she turned to Hugh Ritson.

The heavenly smile was still on her beautiful face, and the deep light in her eyes spoke of mingled joy and grief.

"Hugh, I fear, I fear," she faltered, "I have been hard and cruel. Let us be friends; let me be your dearest sister."

He looked at her in silence. His infirm foot trailed a pace. He saw what was in her heart, and he knew well what was in his own heart, too; he thought of the blow that he was about to strike her.

She held out her hand, and took in hers his own unresisting fingers. Ay, he knew that there and then he was about to break that forgiving heart forever. He knew who had stepped into that carriage.

She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. The man in him could bear up no longer. He broke down; he could not speak; he was choked with emotion.

She turned to the landlady, who stood near, twitching at the ribbons of her bonnet and peering into the carriage.

"Good-bye, Mrs. Drayton, and God bless you for what you have done for my husband!"

The landlady muttered something that was inaudible; she was confused; she stammered, and then was silent.

Greta stepped into the carriage. The guard was standing at the door. The bell had been rung. The train had been signaled. The whistle had sounded. The clocks were striking midnight.

"Wait! Wait!"

It was a voice from the end of the platform. The guard turned with a smile to see who called on a train to wait. An old gentleman in silk stockings and gaiters, with long white hair flowing under the broad brim of a low-crowned hat, came panting to the only door that was still open.

"Quick, sir, it's moving; in with you!"

"Mr. Christian!" cried Greta, and throwing her arms about him, she drew him into the carriage. Then the train began to move away.

At that instant another train – the local train from Kentish Town and Hendon – steamed up to the opposite side of the platform. Before it had stopped two men leaped out. They were the two police-sergeants. Instantly – simultaneously – a man burst through the barrier and ran on to the platform from the street. He was bareheaded, and his face was ghastly white. In one moment the police-sergeants had laid hands upon him. The train to the north had not yet cleared the platform. He saw it passing out. He took hold of the hands by which he was held and threw them off, as if their grasp had been the grasp of a child. Then he bounded away toward the retreating train. It was now moving rapidly. It was gone; it was swallowed up in the dark mouth beyond, and the man stood behind, bareheaded, dripping with perspiration, yet white as ashes, his clothes awry, the collar of his frieze ulster torn away, and a strip of red flannel lining exposed.

It was Paul Ritson.

The police-sergeants hurried up with the re-enforcement of two porters to recover their man. But he was quiet enough now. He did not stir a muscle when they handcuffed him. He looked around with vague, vacant eyes, hardly seeming to realize where he was or what was being done with him. His frenzy was gone.

They led him down the platform. Hugh Ritson was standing on the spot where Greta had left him one minute before. When the company neared that spot the prisoner stopped. He looked across at Hugh Ritson in silence, and for an instant the dazed look died off his face. Then he turned his head aside, and allowed himself to be led quietly away.

CHAPTER XXI

A morning paper, of November – , contained the following paragraph:

"It will be remembered that in the reports of the disastrous railway collision, which occurred at Hendon on Friday last, it was mentioned as a ghastly accessory to the story of horror that an injured passenger, who had been lifted from the debris of broken carriages, and put to lie out of harm's way in a field close at hand, was brutally assaulted and (apparently) robbed by some unknown scoundrel, who, though detected in the act itself, tore himself from the grasp of Police-Sergeant Cox, of the Hendon division of the metropolitan police force, and escaped in the darkness. The authorities were determined that their vigilance should not be eluded, and a person named Paul Drayton is now in custody, and will be brought up at Bow Street this morning. It turns out that Drayton is an innkeeper at Hendon, where he has long borne a dubious character. He was arrested at midnight in St. Pancras Station, in a daring and mad attempt to escape by the north-bound train, and it is understood that the incident of his capture is such as reflects the highest credit on the resolution, energy, and intrepidity of the force."

The same paper, of the day after, contained this further paragraph:

"The man Drayton, who was yesterday formally committed to take his trial at the Central Criminal Court, will be brought up at the Old Bailey to-morrow; and as the evidence is said to be of a simple and unconflicting character, it is not expected that the hearing will extend over a single day. It is stated that the accused, who observed a rigid silence during yesterday's proceedings, will, on his trial, set up the extraordinary defense of mistaken identity."

An evening paper of Friday, November – , contained the following remarks in the course of a leading note:

"It is a familiar legal maxim that a plea of alibi that breaks down is the worst of all accusations. The scoundrel that attempted to rob a dying man, who lay helpless and at his mercy amid the confusion of Friday night's accident at Hendon, was audacious enough to put forth the defense that he was not the man he was taken for. Cases of mistaken identity are, of course, common enough in the annals of jurisprudence, but we imagine the instances are rare indeed of evidence of identity so exceptional and conclusive as that which convicted the Hendon innkeeper being susceptible of error. The very clothes he wore in the dock bore their own witness to his guilt, and the court saw the police-sergeant produce a scrap of cloth torn from the guilty man's back, which exactly fitted a rent in the prisoner's ulster. The whole case would be a case of criminality too gross and palpable to merit a syllable of comment but for the astounding assurance with which the accused adhered to his plea in the face of evidence that was so complete as to make denial little more than a farce. He denied that he was Paul Drayton, and said his name was Paul Ritson. He was identified as Drayton by several witnesses who have known him from infancy; among others by his old mother, Martha Drayton, whose evidence (given with reluctance, and with more tears than a son so unnatural deserved) was at once as damning and as painful as anything of the kind ever heard in a court of justice. The claim to be Paul Ritson was answered by the evidence of Mr. Hugh Ritson, mine-owner in Cumberland, and brother of the gentleman whom the prisoner wished to personate. Mr. H. Ritson admitted a resemblance, but had no hesitation in saying that the accused was not his brother. The prisoner thereupon applied to the court that the wife of Paul Ritson should be examined, but, as it was explained that both husband and wife were at present ill in Cumberland, the court wisely ruled against the application. As a final freak of defense, the prisoner asked for the examination of one Mercy Fisher, who, he said, would be able to say by what circumstances he came to wear the clothes of the guilty man. The court adjourned for an hour in order that this person might be produced, but on reassembling it was explained that the girl, who turned out to be a mistress whom Drayton had kept at his mother's house, had disappeared. Thus, with a well-merited sentence of three years' penal servitude, ended a trial of which the vulgarity of detail was only equalled by the audacity of defense."

A week passed, and the public had almost forgotten the incidents of the trial, when the following paragraph appeared in a weekly journal:

"I have heard that the man who was sentenced to three years' penal servitude for robbery at the scene of the Hendon accident was seized with an attack of brain fever immediately upon his arrival at Millbank. The facts that transpire within that place of retirement are whispered with as much reserve as guards the secrets of another kind of confessional, but I do hear that since the admission of the man who was known on his trial as Paul Drayton, and who is now indicated by a numerical cognomen, certain facts have come to light which favor the defense he set up of mistaken identity."

CHAPTER XXII

The chapter room of St. Margaret's Convent was a chill, bare chamber containing an oak table and four or five plain oak chairs. On the painted walls, which were of dun gray, there was an etching by a Florentine master of the flight into Egypt, and a symbolic print of the Sacred Heart. Besides these pictures there was but a single text to relieve the blindness of the empty walls, and it ran: "Where the tree falls, there it must lie."

Four days after Greta's departure from the house wherein she had been received as a temporary boarder, the superior sat in the chapter room, and a sister knelt at her feet. The sister's habit was gray and her linen cape was plain. She wore no scapular, and no hood above the close cap that hid her hair and crossed her forehead. She was, therefore, a lay sister; she was Sister Grace.

"Mother, hear my sin," she said in a trembling whisper.

"Speak on, daughter."

"We were both at Athlone in the year of the great famine. He was an officer in a regiment quartered there. I was a novice of the choir in the Order of Charity. We met in scenes sanctified by religion. Oh, mother, the famine was sore, and he was kind to the famished people! 'The hunger is on us,' they would cry, as if it had been a plague of locusts. It was thus, with their shrill voices and wan faces, that the ragged multitudes followed us. Yes, mother, he was very, very kind to the people."

"Well?"

The penitent bowed her head yet lower. "My mother, I renounced the vows, and – we were married."

The lips of the superior moved in silent prayer.

"What was his name, my daughter?"

"Robert Lowther. We came from Ireland to London. A child was born, and we called him Paul. Then my husband's love grew chill and died. I grieved over him. Perhaps I was but a moody companion. At last he told me – "

The voice faltered; the whole body quivered.

"Well, my child?"

"Oh, mother, he told me I was not his wife; that I was a Catholic, but that he was a Protestant; that a Catholic priest had married us in Ireland without question or inquiry. That was not a valid marriage by English law."

"Shame on the English law! But what do we know of the law at the foot of the Cross? Well?"

"He left me. Mother, I flung God's good gift away. I tried to drown myself, and my little child with me; but they prevented me. I was placed in an asylum for the insane, and my baby – my Paul – was given into the care of a woman with whom I had lodged. Have I not sinned deeply?"

"Your sins are great, my daughter, but your sufferings have also been great. What happened then?"

"I escaped from the asylum and returned for my child. It was gone. The woman had removed to some other part of London, none knew where, and my Paul, my darling, was lost to me forever. My mother, it was then that I sinned deepest of all."

Her head was bowed to her trembling knees, and her voice was all but suspended in an agony of shame.

"Mother, I flung away God's better gift than life! Oh, how shall I tell you? Your foot trembles, reverend mother. You are a holy woman, and know nothing of the world's temptations."

"Hush, my daughter; I am as great a sinner as yourself."

"I cannot tell you. Mother, mother, you see I cannot."

"It is for your soul's weal, my daughter."

"I had tried to serve God, and He had seen my shame. What was left to me but the world, the world, the world! Perhaps the world itself would have more mercy. My kind mother, have I not told you yet?"

The superior made the sign of the cross.

"Ah, my daughter! the enemy of your soul was with you then. You should not have ceased to lift your hands to Heaven in supplication and prayer. You should have prostrated yourself three days and nights in the tribune before the Holy Sacrament."

The penitent raised her pale face.

"In less time I was a lost and abandoned woman."

The superior told a few beads with trembling fingers. Then she lifted the cross that hung from her girdle, and held it out to the sister.

"I thought of my child, and prayed that he might be dead. I thought of him who was not my husband, and my heart grew cold and hard. Mother, my redemption came. Yes, but with it came the meaning of the fearful words, too late. Amid the reeling madness of the life that is mocked with the name of gay, I met a good man. Yes, holy mother, a good man. Mother, he now sleeps there!"

Her pale face, serene and solemn, was lifted again, and the hand that held the crucifix was raised above her head.

"I loathed my life. He took me away from it – to the mountains – to Scotland, and a child was born. Mother, it was only then that I awoke as from a trance. It seemed as if a ring of sin begirt me. Tears – ah, me! what tears were shed. But rest and content came at last, and then we were married."

"My daughter, my daughter, little did I think when I received your vows that the enemy of your soul had so mastered you."

"Listen a little longer, holy mother. The child grew to be the image of my darling, my Paul – every feature, every glance the same. And partly to remind me of my lost one, and partly to make me forget him forever, I called the second child Paul. Mother, the years went by in peace. The past was gone from me. Only its memory lay like a waste in my silent heart. I had another son, and called him Hugh. After many years my husband died." The penitent paused.