University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII.
IN WHICH MRS. DILLINGHAM MAKES SOME IMPORTANT DISCOVERIES,
BUT FAILS TO REVEAL THEM TO THE READER.

Mrs. Dillingham was walking back and forth alone through
her long drawing-room. She was revolving in her mind a
compliment, breathed into her ear by her friend Mrs. Talbot
that day. Mrs. Talbot had heard from the mouth of one of
Mrs. Dillingham's admirers the statement, confirmed with a
hearty, good-natured oath, that he considered the fascinating
widow “the best groomed woman in New York.”

The compliment conveyed a certain intimation which was
not pleasant for her to entertain. She was indebted to her
skill in self-“grooming” for the preservation of her youthful
appearance. She had been conscious of this, but it was not
pleasant to have the fact detected by her friends. Neither
was it pleasant to have it bruited in society, and reported to
her by one who rejoiced in the delicacy of the arrow which,
feathered by friendship, she had been able to plant in the
widow's breast.

She walked to her mirror and looked at herself. There
were the fine, familiar outlines of face and figure; there
were the same splendid eyes; but a certain charm beyond the
power of “grooming” to restore was gone. An incipient,
almost invisible, brood of wrinkles was gathering about her
eyes; there was a loss of freshness of complexion, and an expression
of weariness and age, which, in the repose of reflection
and inquisition, almost startled her.

Her youth was gone, and, with it, the most potent

charms of her person. She was hated and suspected by her
own sex, and sought by men for no reason honorable either to
her or to them. She saw that it was all, at no distant day, to
have an end, and that when the end should come, her life
would practically be closed. When the means by which she
had held so many men in her power were exhausted, her power
would cease. Into the blackness of that coming night she
could not bear to look. It was full of hate, and disappointment,
and despair. She knew that there was a taint upon her—
the taint that comes to every woman, as certainly as death, who
patently and purposely addresses, through her person, the sensuous
element in men. It was not enough for her to remember
that she despised the passion she excited, and contemned the
men whom she fascinated. She knew it was better to lead
even a swine by a golden chain than by the ears.

She reviewed her relations to Mr. Belcher. That strong,
harsh, brutal man, lost alike to conscience and honor, was in
her hands. What should she do with him? He was becoming
troublesome. He was not so easily managed as the most
of her victims. She knew that, in his heart, he was carrying
the hope that some time in the future, in some way, she
would become his; that she had but to lift her finger to make
the Palgrave mansion so horrible a hell that the wife and
mother would fly from it in indignant despair. She had no
intention of doing this. She wished for no more intimate
relation with her victim than she had already established.

There was one thing in which Mr. Belcher had offended and
humiliated her. He had treated her as if he had fascinated
her. In his stupid vanity, he had fancied that his own personal
attractions had won her heart and her allegiance, and
that she, and not himself, was the victim. He had tried to
use her in the accomplishment of outside purposes; to make
a tool of her in carrying forward his mercenary or knavish
ends. Other men had striven to hide their unlovely affairs
from her, but the new lover had exposed his, and claimed her
assistance in carrying them forward. This was a degradation

that she could not submit to. It did not flatter her, or minister
to her self-respect.

Again and again had Mr. Belcher urged her to get the little
Sevenoaks pauper into her confidence, and to ascertain
whether his father were still living. She did not doubt that
his fear of a man so poor and powerless as the child's father
must be, was based in conscious knavery; and to be put to
the use of deceiving a lad whose smile of affectionate admiration
was one of the sweetest visions of her daily life, disgusted
and angered her. The thought, in any man's mind, that she
could be so base, in consideration of a guilty affection for him,
as to betray the confidence of an innocent child on his behalf,
disgraced and degraded her.

And still she walked back and forth in her drawing-room.
Her thoughts were uneasy and unhappy; there was no love
in her life. That life was leading to no satisfactory consummation.
How could it be changed? What could she do?

She raised her eyes, looked across the street, and there saw,
loitering along and casting furtive glances at her window, the
very lad of whom she had been thinking. He had sought
and waited for her recognition, and instead of receiving it in
the usual way, saw a beckoning finger. He waited a moment,
to be sure that he had not misunderstood the sign, and then,
when it was repeated, crossed over, and stood at the door.
Mrs. Dillingham admitted the boy, then called the servant,
and told him that, while the lad remained, she would not be
at home to any one. As soon as the pair were in the drawing-room
she stooped and kissed the lad, warming his heart with a
smile so sweet, and a manner so cordial and gracious, that he
could not have told whether his soul was his own or hers.

She led him to her seat, giving him none, but sitting with
her arm around him, as he stood at her side.

“You are my little lover, aren't you?” she said, with an
embrace.

“Not so very little!” responded Harry, with a flush.

“Well, you love me, don't you?”

“Perhaps I do,” replied he, looking smilingly into her
eyes.

“You are a rogue, sir.”

“I'm not a bad rogue.”

“Kiss me.”

Harry put his arms around Mrs. Dillingham's neck and
kissed her, and received a long, passionate embrace in return,
in which her starved heart expressed the best of its powerful
nature.

Nor clouds nor low-born vapors drop the dew. It only
gathers under a pure heaven and the tender eyes of stars.
Mrs. Dillingham had always held a heart that could respond
to the touch of a child. It was dark, its ways were crooked,
it was not a happy heart, but for the moment her whole nature
was flooded with a tender passion. A flash of lightning from
heaven makes the darkest night its own, and gilds with
glory the uncouth shapes that grope and crawl beneath its
cover.

“And your name is Harry?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Do you mind telling me about yourself?”

Harry hesitated. He knew that he ought not to do it.
He had received imperative commands not to tell anybody
about himself; but his temptation to yield to the beautiful
lady's wishes was great, for he was heart-starved like herself.
Mrs. Balfour was kind, even affectionate, but he felt that he
had never filled the place in her heart of the boy she had lost.
She did not take him into her embrace, and lavish caresses
upon him. He had hungered for just this, and the impulse
to show the whole of his heart and life to Mrs. Dillingham
was irresistible.

“If you'll never tell.”

“I will never tell, Harry.”

“Never, never tell?”

“Never.”

“You are Mr. Belcher's friend, aren't you?”

“I know Mr. Belcher.”

“If Mr. Belcher should tell you that he would kill you if
you didn't tell, what would you do?”

“I should call the police,” responded Mrs. Dillingham,
with a smile.

Then Harry, in a simple, graphic way, told her all about
the hard, wretched life in Sevenoaks, the death of his mother,
the insanity of his father, the life in the poor-house, the
escape, the recovery of his father's health, his present home,
and the occasion of his own removal to New York. The narrative
was so wonderful, so full of pathos, so tragic, so out of
all proportion in its revelation of wretchedness to the little
life at her side, that the lady was dumb. Unconsciously to herself—almost
unconsciously to the boy—her arms closed around
him, and she lifted him into her lap. There, with his head
against her breast, he concluded his story; and there were
tears upon his hair, rained from the eyes that bent above him.
They sat for a long minute in silence. Then the lady, to
keep herself from bursting into hysterical tears, kissed Harry
again and again, exclaiming:

“My poor, dear boy! My dear, dear child! And Mr.
Belcher could have helped it all! Curse him!”

The lad jumped from her arms as if he had received the
thrust of a dagger, and looked at her with great, startled,
wondering eyes. She recognized in an instant the awful indiscretion
into which she had been betrayed by her fierce and
sudden anger, and threw herself upon her knees before the
boy, exclaiming:

“Harry, you must forgive me. I was beside myself with
anger. I did not know what I was saying. Indeed, I did
not. Come to my lap again, and kiss me, or I shall be
wretched.”

Harry still maintained his attitude and his silence. A furious
word from an angel would not have surprised or pained
him more than this expression of her anger, that had flashed
upon him like a fire from hell.

Still the lady knelt, and pleaded for his forgiveness.

“No one loves me, Harry. If you leave me, and do not
forgive me, I shall wish I were dead. You cannot be so cruel.”

“I didn't know that ladies ever said such words,” said
Harry.

“Ladies who have little boys to love them never do,” responded
Mrs. Dillingham.

“If I love you, shall you ever speak so again?” inquired
Harry.

“Never, with you and God to help me,” she responded.

She rose to her feet, led the boy to her chair, and once
more held him in her embrace.

“You can do me a great deal of good, Harry—a great deal
more good than you know, or can understand. Men and
women make me worse. There is nobody who can protect
me like a child that trusts me. You can trust me.”

Then they sat a long time in a silence broken only by
Harry's sobs, for the excitement and the reaction had shaken
his nerves as if he had suffered a terrible fright.

“You have never told me your whole name, Harry,” she
said tenderly, with the design of leading him away from the
subject of his grief.

“Harry Benedict.”

He felt the thrill that ran through her frame, as if it had
been a shock of electricity. The arms that held him trembled,
and half relaxed their hold upon him. Her heart struggled,
intermitted its beat, then throbbed against his reclining head
as if it were a hammer. He raised himself, and looked up at
her face. It was pale and ghastly; and her eyes were dimly
looking far off, as if unconscious of anything near.

“Are you ill?”

There was no answer.

“Are you ill?” with a voice of alarm.

The blood mounted to her face again.

“It was a bad turn,” she said. “Don't mind it. I'm
better now.”

“Isn't it better for me to sit in a chair?” he inquired,
trying to rise.

She tightened her grasp upon him.

“No, no. I am better with you here. I wish you were
never to leave me.”

Again they sat a long time in silence. Then she said:

“Harry, can you write?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there is a pencil on the table, and paper. Go and
write your father's name. Then come and give me a kiss, and
then go home. I shall see you again, perhaps to-night. I
suppose I ought to apologize to Mrs. Balfour for keeping you
so long.”

Harry did her bidding. She did not look at him, but turned
her eyes to the window. There she saw Mr. Belcher, who
had just been sent away from the door. He bowed, and she
returned the bow, but the smile she summoned to her face by
force of habit, failed quickly, for her heart had learned to
despise him.

Harry wrote the name, left it upon the table, and then came
to get his kiss. The caress was calmer and tenderer than any
she had given him. His instinct detected the change; and,
when he bade her a good night, it seemed as if she had grown
motherly,—as if a new life had been developed in her that
subordinated the old,—as if, in her life, the sun had set, and
the moon had risen.

She had no doubt that as Harry left the door Mr. Belcher
would see him, and seek admission at once on his hateful
business, for, strong as his passion was for Mrs. Dillingham,
he never forgot his knavish affairs, in which he sought to use
her as a tool. So when she summoned the servant to let
Harry out, she told him that if Mr. Belcher should call, he
was to be informed that she was too ill to see him.

Mr. Belcher did call within three minutes after the door
closed on the lad. He had a triumphant smile on his face,
as if he did not doubt that Mrs. Dillingham had been engaged

in forwarding his own dirty work. His face blackened as he
received her message, and he went wondering home, with ill-natured
curses on his lips that will not bear repeating.

Mrs. Dillingham closed the doors of her drawing-room,
took the paper on which Harry had written, and resumed her
seat. For the hour that lay between her and her dinner, she held
the paper in her cold, wet hand. She knew the name she
should find there, and she determined that before her eye
should verify the prophecy of her heart, she would achieve
perfect self-control.

Excited by the interview with the lad, and the prescience
of its waiting dénouement, her mind went back into his and
his father's history. Mr. Belcher could have alleviated that
history; nay, prevented it altogether. What had been her
own responsibility in the case? She could not have foreseen
all the horrors of that history; but she, too, could have prevented
it. The consciousness of this filled her with self-condemnation;
yet she could not acknowledge herself to be on
a level with Mr. Belcher. She was ready and anxious to right
all the wrongs she had inflicted; he was bent on increasing
and confirming them. She cursed him in her heart for his
injustice and cruelty, and almost cursed herself.

But she dwelt most upon the future which the discoveries of
the hour had rendered possible to herself. She had found a way
out of her hateful life. She had found a lad who admired,
loved, and trusted her, upon whom she could lavish her hungry
affections—one, indeed, upon whom she had a right to
lavish them. The life which she had led from girlhood was
like one of those deep cañons in the far West, down which
her beautiful boat had been gliding between impassable walls
that gave her only here and there glimpses of the heaven above.
The uncertain stream had its fascinations. There were beautiful
shallows over which she had glided smoothly and safely,
rocks and rapids over which she had shot swiftly amid attractive
dangers, crooked courses that led she did not know
whither, landing-places where she could enjoy an hour of the

kindly sun. But all the time she knew she was descending.
The song of the waterfalls was a farewell song to scenes that
could never be witnessed again. Far away perhaps, perhaps
near, waited the waters of the gulf that would drink the
sparkling stream into its sullen depths, and steep it in its own
bitterness. It was beautiful all the way, but it was going
down, down, down. It was seeking the level of its death;
and the little boat that rode so buoyantly over the crests which
betrayed the hidden rocks, would be but a chip among the
waves of the broad, wild sea that waited at the end.

Out of the fascinating roar that filled her ears; out of the
sparkling rapids and sheeny reaches, and misty cataracts that
enchanted her eyes; and out of the relentless drift toward
the bottomless sea, she could be lifted! The sun shone overhead.
There were rocks to climb where her hands would
bleed; there were weary heights to scale; but she knew that
on the top there were green pastures and broad skies, and the
music of birds—places where she could rest, and from which
she could slowly find her way back, in loving companionship,
to the mountains of purity from which she had come.

She revolved the possibilities of the future; and, provided
the little paper in her hand should verify her expectations,
she resolved to realize them. During the long hour in which
she sat thinking, she discounted the emotion which the little
paper in her hand held for her, so that, when she unfolded it
and read it, she only kissed it, and placed it in her bosom.

After dinner, she ordered her carriage. Then, thinking
that it might be recognized by Mr. Belcher, she changed her
order, and sent to a public stable for one that was not identified
with herself; and then, so disguising her person that in
the evening she would not be known, she ordered the driver
to take her to Mr. Balfour's.

Mrs. Dillingham had met Mr. Balfour many times, but she
had never, though on speaking terms with her, cultivated
Mrs. Balfour's acquaintance, and that lady did not fail to
show the surprise she felt when her visitor was announced.

“I have made the acquaintance of your little ward,” said
Mrs. Dillingham, “and we have become good friends. I
enticed him into my house to-day, and as I kept him a long
time, I thought I would come over and apologize for his absence.”

“I did not know that he had been with you,” said Mrs.
Balfour, coolly.

“He could do no less than come to me when I asked him
to do so,” said Mrs. Dillingham; “and I was entirely to
blame for his remaining with me so long. You ladies who have
children cannot know how sweet their society sometimes is to
those who have none.”

Mrs. Balfour was surprised. She saw in her visitor's eyes
the evidence of recent tears, and there was a moisture in them
then, and a subdued and tender tone to her voice which did
not harmonize at all with her conception of Mrs. Dillingham's
nature and character. Was she trying her arts upon her?
She knew of her intimacy with Mr. Belcher, and naturally
connected the visit with that unscrupulous person's schemes.

Mrs. Balfour was soon relieved by the entrance of her husband,
who greeted Mrs. Dillingham in the old, stereotyped,
gallant way in which gentlemen were accustomed to address
her. How did she manage to keep herself so young? Would
she be kind enough to give Mrs. Balfour the name of her hairdresser?

What waters had she bathed in, what airs had she
breathed, that youth should clothe her in such immortal fashion?

Quite to his surprise, Mrs. Dillingham had nothing to say
to this badinage. She seemed either not to hear it at all, or
to hear it with impatience. She talked in a listless way, and
appeared to be thinking of anything but what was said.

At last, she asked Mr. Balfour if she could have the liberty
to obtrude a matter of business upon him. She did not like
to interfere with his home enjoyments, but he would oblige
her much by giving her half an hour of private conversation.
Mr. Balfour looked at his wife, received a significant glance,
and invited the lady into his library.

It was a long interview. Nine o'clock, ten o'clock, eleven
o'clock sounded, and then Mrs. Balfour went upstairs. It
was nearly midnight when Mrs. Dillingham emerged from the
door. She handed a bank-note to the impatient coachman,
and ordered him to drive her home. As she passed Mr.
Belcher's corner of the street, she saw Phipps helping his
master to mount the steps. He had had an evening of carousal
among some of his new acquaintances. “Brute!” she said
to herself, and withdrew her head from the window.

Admitted at her door, she went to her room in her unusual
wrappings, threw herself upon her knees, and buried her face
in her bed. She did not pray; she hardly lifted her thoughts.
She was excessively weary. Why she knelt she did not know;
but on her knees she thought over the occurrences of the
evening. Her hungry soul was full—full of hopes, plans, purposes.
She had found something to love.

What is that angel's name who, shut away from ten thousand
selfish, sinful lives, stands always ready, when the
bearers of those lives are tired of them, and are longing for
something better, to open the door into a new realm? What
patience and persistence are his! Always waiting, always
prepared, cherishing no resentments, willing to lead, anxious
to welcome, who is he, and whence came he? If Mrs. Dillingham
did not pray, she had a vision of this heavenly
visitant, and kissed the hem of his garments.

She rose and walked to her dressing-table. There she
found a note in Mrs. Belcher's hand-writing, inviting her to a
drive in the Park with her and Mr. Belcher on the following
afternoon. Whether the invitation was self-moved, or the
result of a suggestion from Mr. Belcher, she did not know.
In truth, she did not care. She had wronged Mrs. Belcher in
many ways, and she would go.

Why was it that when the new and magnificent carriage
rolled up to her door the next afternoon, with its wonderful
horses and showy equipage, and appointments calculated to
attract attention, her heart was smitten with disgust? She

was to be stared at; and, during all the drive, she was to sit
face to face with a man who believed that he had fascinated
her, and who was trying to use her for all the base purposes
in which it was possible for her to serve his will. What could
she do with him? How, in the new relations of her life to
him, should she carry herself?

The drive was a quiet one. Mr. Belcher sat and feasted
his greedy, exultant eyes on the woman before him, and marveled
at the adroitness with which, to use his own coarse
phrase, she “pulled the wool” over the eyes of his wife. In
what a lovely way did she hide her passion for him! How
sweetly did she draw out the sympathy of the deceived
woman at her side! Ah! he could trust her! Her changed,
amiable, almost pathetic demeanor was attributed by him to
the effect of his power upon her, and her own subtle ingenuity
in shielding from the eyes of Mrs. Belcher a love that she
deemed hopeless. In his own mind it was not hopeless. In
his own determination, it should not be!

As for Mrs. Belcher, she had never so much enjoyed Mrs.
Dillingham's society before. She blamed herself for not
having understood her better; and when she parted with her
for the day, she expressed in hearty terms her wish that she
might see more of her in the future.

Mrs. Dillingham, on the return, was dropped at her own
door first. Mr. Belcher alighted, and led her up the steps.
Then, in a quiet voice, he said:

“Did you find out anything of the boy?”

“Yes, some things, but none that it would be of advantage
to you to know.”

“Well, stick to him, now that you have got hold of him.”

“I intend to.”

“Good for you!”

“I imagine that he has been pretty well drilled,” said Mrs.
Dillingham, “and told just what he may and must not say to
any one.”

“You can work it out of him. I'll risk you.”

Mrs. Dillingham could hardly restrain her impatience, but
said quietly:

“I fancy I have discovered all the secrets I shall ever discover
in him. I like the boy, and shall cultivate his
acquaintance; but, really, it will not pay you to rely upon
me for anything. He is under Mr. Balfour's directions, and
very loyal.”

Mr. Belcher remembered his own interview with the lad,
and recognized the truth of the statement. Then he bade
her good-bye, rejoined his wife, and rode home.